





MARY H.KROUT 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 



Platters and Pipkins 



By 
MARY H. KROUT 



There's pippins and cheese to come' 

— Merry Wives of Windsor 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1910 



K7 



COPYRIGHT 

By MARY H. KROUT 

1910 

Published October 15, 1910 



CCIjicago 



(g;Ci.A2'«o^) 



DEDICATED TO 

ALL HOUSEKEEPERS: 

THE MANY WHO ARE STILL STRIVING 

AND THE FEW 

WHO HAVE BEEN PERFECTED 

THROUGH SUFFERING 



Contents 

PAGE 
CHAPTER 

1. Matters in General 9 

II. About Kitchens 17 

III. The Pains and Pleasures of Dish- 
washing ^^ 

IV. Sweeping — Past and Present . . 40 
V. Some Reflections About Dusting 47 

VI. The Pantry Shelves and Door . . 58 
VII. A Few Thoughts About the Cellar 60 

VIII. Up in the Attic 70 

IX. Round About the Back Porch . 78 
X. Through the Hall to the Front Door 85 

XI. The Dining- Room 92 

XII. Table Talk 103 

XIII. Where the Books Are . . . .111 

XIV. The Evolution ot the Parlor . .122 

XV. The Secrets of the Spare Room . 132 

XVI. The Sewing-Room 143 

XVII. Euphemia's Bower 153 

XVIII. Mistress and Maid 165 

XIX. Small Politenesses 176 

XX. Questions of Detail 186 

XXIe Euphemia's Unrest 193 

XXII. Conclusions 202 




Matters in General 



THERE are houses and houses. 
Comfort and cleanhness are not 
indigenous to any special soil. 
They are, rather, like growth in 
grace — the outcome of struggle, 
of conflict and of eternal patience. 
We all know that in the midst of life we are in 
death, and, in the ceaseless disintegration that 
goes on everywhere the house and its belongings 
are not spared. Moth and dust are busy with 
the clothing, curtains and rugs, while silent chem- 
ical agencies cease not, by day or night, proclaim- 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ing themselves in mould, fermentation and decay, 
apparent to the sight and to the sense of smell. 
What the cook calls "spoiling" is but a varied 
reminder of the temporary nature of all things 
earthly. Matter may be indestructible, but its 
transformations are without end and number. 

There are some melancholy verses pasted in 
more than one woman's scrapbook which recite 
the woes of the despairing housekeeper who 
throughout her existence swept and dusted, and 
scrubbed, waging a life-long war against dirt. 
The conclusion of the whole matter was, that, 
overcome at last, she lay down and "was buried in 
dirt" — a tragical conclusion which must be ac- 
cepted, notwithstanding Richard Grant White's 
strictures against the hateful word. 

It is the inevitable end, of course, but it is not, 
after all, a cause, fdr hopeless discouragdfeient. 
Because oite must work to-day, and to-morrow 
and the next day, doing pretty much the same 
things over and over again, it should not really 
dishearten one. The great mother of us all, Dame 
Nature herself, proceeds in the same round, on 

10 



MATTERS IN GENERAL 

the same plan, and so furnishes the race an eter- 
nal example of perfect order and submission. 

The leaves that swell and burst, and shake 
themselves free, under the skies of May, to find 
the sun shining, the birds singing, the soft south 
wind blowing, are doomed to wither and fall. 
Beyond the heavenly graciousness of spring, the 
fervid heat of midsummer, the frost is waiting to 
blight, and the snow to cover them. But what 
of it ? They will come again and yet again, with 
unfailing verdancy from the secret places of cre- 
ation. 

Women are apt to rebel against what they call 
"the monotony of housework." But what work, 
well done, is not monotonous? The husband and 
father goes to his shop or office six days in the 
week, often the whole year round. He pores 
over his ledgers, contends with stupid and idle 
employees, and has a thousand vexations which 
he knows are inseparable from the business he 
has chosen. Between the sins of the slatternly 
maid in the kitchen, and the blunders of clerks 
or workmen, that may involve the loss of thous- 

11 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ands of dollars, there is certainly not much 
choice. 

The only wisdom is not to expect perfection — 
an unattainable state that no human being has 
yet achieved. 

When Euphemia kindles the kitchen fire with 
gasohne — with disastrous consequences — one 
must reflect that, if she knew better, she would 
not be in the kitchen at all, but in a "nate house 
of her own," or perhaps on your calling list. To 
put one's expectations on "a low plane" — to 
use one of the trite expressions of the hour — is 
alike to be prepared for disappointment, should 
it come, or for joyful and ecstatic surprise if it 
doesn't. 

*'Think on your marcies," as Uncle Tom coun- 
seled, in his beautiful faith in the Giver of all 
good gifts. If the biscuits are heavy, be thank- 
ful that they are not poisonous; if your second 
best muslin has been faded to a sickly grey by 
one of those perfectly harmless washing pow- 
ders, be thankful that you still have a first best 
that you can, in an emergency, "do up" your- 



12 



MATTERS IN GENERAL 

self, or send to the cleaner — one of course whom 
you know well. This method, resolutely adopted 
and followed, will develop philosophic endur- 
ance, if not a cheerfulness, passing that of 
Mark Tapley, in all but the hopelessly dyspeptic 
or the victims of hereditary melancholia. 

In the midst of much mending, patching, 
darning and altering, the minds of the orthodox 
turn wistfully to the imperishable garments of 
the children of Israel sojourning in the wilder- 
ness. No wonder that then and there was de- 
veloped a superior type — "Mothers in Israel" 
— who have been a synonym to this day, for all 
the high virtues of exceeding godliness. 

But, reflect upon their opportunities! Those 
simple and indestructible garments which noth- 
ing could soil, or tear, or mar in any way! For 
forty years the fashions never changed. The 
sleeves, full at the top and tight at the wrist one 
season, did not maliciously and perversely re- 
verse themselves the next, and if they were but- 
toned it was with buttons that never came off; 
or, if tied, with strings that never broke. This 

13 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

one department of household economics, to use 
another word in high favor just now, left hours 
for devotion and meditation, under circumstances 
that tended to soothe the most irritable nerves 
and the most perturbed spirit. 

But the blessings of the Chosen Ones did not 
end there, for, with the entire elimination of the 
clothes problem, they knew nothing of houses 
with modern improvements, and, for a time, at 
least, manna was rained down from Heaven, only 
to be gathered, fresh and satisfying, every morn- 
ing. There were no struggles with brands of 
poor flour and adulterated baking-powder, no 
by-products of coal-tar, no glucose, no cotton- 
seed oil, or health foods; nor were the days of 
high teas, ceremonious luncheons or the ten 
course dinner even prophesied, though that was 
the dawn of a prophetic age. 

When one reflects upon all this, one is amazed 
that the Mothers in Israel — the only women of 
leisure that ever lived — did not set their faces 
stubbornly against further emigration. No 
Promised Land could have offered them half the 



14 



MATTERS IN GENERAL 

opportunities for high thinking and serene char- 
acter building that they found there in what has 
passed into history — and very mistakenly — as 
the wilderness. 

The Promised Land, once reached, meant for 
their lords, who apparently had not yet become 
their masters, endless warfare with tribes whose 
names alone constitute entire lessons in the morn- 
ing service from time to time during the ecclesi- 
astical year; and for themselves living in houses 
with all that appertains thereto. 

With their indestructible clothes and an un- 
failing supply of manna, they might have estab- 
lished an ideal civilization in the wilderness based 
upon perfect equality — a spiritual and intel- 
lectual communism beyond all imagining. 

They did not ; hence the combined ills and occu- 
pations that have descended to the present gener- 
ation. Upon the whole, however, these descend- 
ants have not acquitted themselves so badly when 
one bears in mind the steady increase of obstacles 
to the simple life which we are all discussing 
a great deal and avoiding as much as possible. 

15 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

Indeed, I am reminded in this connection of a 
good old clergyman of the primitive Baptist 
Church who used to combine lecturing on tem- 
perance with his sermonizing. He was address- 
ing a drowsy audience one hot August afternoon 
in the village court-house. Frightful examples 
of the effects of intemperance were cited and end- 
less facts and figures poured into the dulled ears 
of his hearers. Last of all, he said : 

"Those present who wish to do so may now 
sign the pledge. The females need not sign. The 
females are doing as well as they know how." 



16 




II 



About Kitchens 



T 



HE kitchen is like the power- 
house of an electric railwa}^ The 
comfortable cars fly fast as the 
wind over the smooth rails. The 
passenger sits in his cushioned seat, 
reads his i^aper, or looks out of the 
window at the changing landscape. He sees the 
varied life of town and village, the cattle in the 
fields, the orchards pink with blossoms, or the 
boughs hung with fruit surpassing in brilliancy 
the jewelled trees of Aladdin's adventure. The 
motorman keeps his eye fixed on the track he- 



ir 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

fore him ; the conductor collects the fares and an- 
swers questions, stops and lets people off and 
takes them on. All this time, far off, out of sight, 
the great wheels revolve where the potent force 
is generated — where the elements do not inter- 
fere — under the M^atchful eyes and the guid- 
ance of other hands, unseen and unknown to the 
traveller. 

The kitchen fire is really the mot've power of 
the "whole domestic machinery, and the presiding 
genius that regulates it is a sort of culinary en- 
gineer. 

There are lazy women who profess superiority 
to nourishment for the body. If left to them- 
selves, they browse off the pantry shelves, as 
Wordsworth and his helpmeet are said to 
have done, taking what they find, "because it 
is too much trouble to set the table and cook for 
one." These are the sad and erring patrons of 
restaurants who lunch on ice cream and lemon 
pie, and dine on nothing but entrees, few in num- 
ber, but potent in the promotion of indigestion. 

I have in mind a writer on a western news- 



is 



ABOUT KITCHENS 

paper, hard-worked and not wealthy. She did 
what is called "light housekeeping," in two small 
rooms — that is, she prepared her own breakfasts 
and luncheons. Now, as she was a newspaper 
writer — or simply a woman writer, for that 
matter — it will be at once assumed that she 
could not cook or keep house — "light," or other- 
wise. The opinion is one of those stubborn, 
lingering fallacies like the unreliable proverbs 
which Charles Lamb has dissected, though not 
yet likewise disproved. 

In reality, this woman was highly skilled, 
to such a degree that if she had been a theoso- 
phist — which she was not — she would have 
chosen in her next incarnation to be a cook, and 
leave the typewriter and fountain pen to those 
who had £eons of punishment to undergo for their 
sins. Her napery was of the finest; her china 
and silver shone with much polishing, and to the 
breakfast of fruit, coffee, rolls and chops, a queen 
might have been asked any day in the week. 
What she had, though simple, was of the best 
and beautifully served, and in that spotless sit- 

19 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ting-room, when the table was cleared, there 
never was the faintest smell or suggestion of 
cooking. She had a closed cabinet for her dishes, 
utensils which were light and few in number, a 
covered shelf at the back window for butter, 
milk, and fruit in mild weather, and the use of 
the refrigerator in the basement. She was a 
walking advertisement of good living — sound 
digestion and healthy nerves. 

She said, "I had but one catastrophe in the 
whole three years — and that, of course, was 
when I was expecting friends to lunch. At the 
very last moment the coffee pot fell from the gas 
jet into the upper bureau drawer, which I had 
opened and forgotten to close. But that was 
nothing of consequence. I made fresh coffee and 
shut the drawer until I could set it to rights, 
after the visitors left." 

This illustrates the fact that even in two-room 
housekeeping there must be some semblance of 
a kitchen, though it may not be recognized as 
such. 



20 



ABOUT KITCHENS 

In the old days, in old-fashioned houses, the 
kitchen was the favorite family rendezvous. 

"Where's mother?" was the first query of hus- 
band and sons, and without waiting the answer 
they straightway sought the kitchen and there 
they found her. And she was never bothered by 
their incursions. Nervous prostration was at 
that time unknown. 

I remember what might have been an embar- 
rassing situation had it not been frankly and 
squarely met. A young lawyer asked permission, 
which was granted, to call upon a young woman 
of his acquaintance and bring with him a friend 
— a dignitary of the state Supreme Court. It 
was early in October, and the stoves were not 
up — for that was long before the days of the 
prosaic but convenient steam coil. Suddenly it 
turned very cold. The man hurriedly engaged 
to put up the parlor stove did not arrive until 
six p. m. When it was moved in from the barn 
and heaved into position it was found that the 
pipe had one of those strange attacks of swelling 



21 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

that occur during summer storage, and it would 
not and could not be made to fit. 

By that time the shops were closed and the 
callers were to arrive at eight. There were but 
two alternatives: the callers could be received 
in the icy parlor, there to shiver and catch pos- 
sibly fatal pneumonia; or, they could have the 
privilege of sitting by a comfortable fire in — the 
kitchen ! 

Which should it be? After calm reflection, 
false pride was cast to the winds, the sanctity of 
the Supreme Court was resolutely disregarded. 
What was a judge anyway — except in rare 
instances — but a man? When the visitors 
arrived the situation was explained. They ac- 
cepted it like gentlemen, as they were, and both 
being charming and interesting talkers, the time 
passed swiftly. I am forced to acknowledge that 
it was a very superior sort of a kitchen. It was 
carpeted with a pretty rag carpet of the kind now 
considered very high art, the table was covered 
with a bright crimson cloth; there were nice 
shades and fresh muslin curtains, and a coUec- 

22 



ABOUT KITCHENS 

tion of thrifty geraniums in full bloom on the 
window sill. One of those capacious modern re- 
ceptacles that might be anything, held and hid 
all the cooking supplies and paraphernalia. The 
stove was brilliantly polished, and beside it were 
drawn up three comfortable chairs. The clock 
ticked cheerfully, and near at hand was the pan- 
try from which, at the psychological moment, 
were brought forth satisfying things to eat and 
drink. As a social function, the evening was an 
entire success, which the novel surroundings ap- 
peared only to enhance. 

Our English cousins have a pleasant fashion 
of "showing you the house," once you have been 
asked across its threshold. You are personally 
conducted through drawing-rooms, library, re- 
ception rooms, and even bedchambers, and they 
never think of leaving out the kitchen. 

"Would you like to peep into the kitchen and 
see the cook making bread?" asked a hospitable 
matron who, in her shiny black silk dress and 
high lace cap, lacked only the mediaeval cuirass 



23 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and sword, to have posed for Britannia raling 
the waves. 

I have another English kitchen in mind — a 
sweet place in Kent — ''homely," a British sub- 
ject would have called it. There was a stone- 
flagged floor, with stout beams of age-blackened 
oak overhead, and many kinds of burnished cop- 
per vessels were ranged along the walls. Here, 
after a long walk across the twilight fields to 
hear the nightingales sing in the copses, we gath- 
ered about the well scoured table to refresh our- 
selves with a truly English ten o'clock supper of 
bread and butter, cheese, brawn and salad. To the 
American guest, the clock of time had stopped. 
Her native land had only just been discovered; 
telephones and telegraphs, air ships and motor 
cars were questionable blessings and undreamed 
of. Had the host begun to talk in the vernacular 
of Pepys and Evelyn, she would not have been 
surprised. But what American would have in- 
vited an unfamiliar guest to supper at a deal 
table in the kitchen, in that unaffected and truly 
hospitable fashion? It must be confessed, how- 

S4 



ABOUT KITCHENS 

ever, in extenuation, that few or none of us have 
such kitchens. Ours are never so dignified and 
massively simple, invaded as they have been by 
all manner of balking, labor-saving inventions — 
doubtful improvements in a disguise that they 
will never shed — around which the plumber and 
the electrician hover perpetually. 

Much of the work to which the kitchen was 
once devoted is now done elsewhere. The coffee 
is ground at the grocer's, and the morning slum- 
bers of those who occupy the back bedchambers 
are not disturbed by the reassuring rattle of the 
coffee-mill. 

Linoleum is warmer and easier to clean than 
bare boards, and deadens Euphemia's elephant- 
ine tread — Euphemia who has sniffed at and 
rejected with scorn the sound-proof felt slippers 
provided her gratuitously by a generous mistress. 

The cabinets which have been mentioned, and 
which really are not lightly to be rejected, re- 
mind one, nevertheless, of folding beds. The 
pot closet is decorously veiled ; there are pictures 
and illuminated calendars with a correct domestic 



25 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

sentiment for every day in the year; and there 
are little recesses curtained with art chintz for the 
dish, that never again, in this age of suppressed 
imagination, will run away with the spoon. 

The water is "laid on" as the English say, 
though why, no one knows, and a turn of the 
nickel-plated faucet in the sink lets forth a clear 
stream which one is admonished by the Board of 
Health to boil carefully before drinking, as a pre- 
caution against typhoid germs. 

Some of the inventions are really a saving of 
backs, without which the woman's club would 
not be possible. But it is among the unsolvable 
problems that with the multiplication of patent 
contrivances our domestic burdens apparently 
increase, and we have less leisure than ever. 

The contented soul that pieced "Rising Sun" 
patchwork quilts, did all the family sewing by 
hand, and spun and wove the household flannel 
and bleached the family linen, has vanished with 
long-legged spiders and warming-pans, cakes 
made with seventeen eggs^ — whites and yolks 
beaten separately — and funeral invitations. 

26 



ABOUT KITCHENS 

But, to return to the original proposition, the 
kitchen fire is really the motive power of the 
whole domestic machinery. With that fire out, 
the whole household mechanism comes to a stand- 
still. Three good, plain, wholesome meals a day, 
which must be produced from its stores and ap- 
pliances, are necessary to the well-being of the 
whole family, to the mother, herself ; to the father, 
harassed by many business cares ; to the children, 
driven to the limit of their strength in the frantic 
rivalry to "make credits" and pass grades. 

And, though Euphemia may strike, or be dis- 
abled with some sudden and acute ailment, the 
situation need not become desperate. Family co- 
operation can be secured with a little firmness; 
simple diet may be prescribed. The practicable 
rule observed of "washing up as you go," put- 
ting everything back in its place when it has been 
used and is, no longer needed, will, of itself, rob 
the kitchen of half its terrors and restore at least 
a part of its old pleasantness. 



27 




ains and Pleasures 
of Dish -washing 

NE of the mixed troubles of my 
childhood is the recollection of 
^f standing on what was known as 
"the flat-bottomed chair," in one of 
the familiar crises — just after the 
last maid-of-all-work had departed 
and her successor had not yet arrived. The stand- 
ing was not in the nature of discipline, but be- 
cause I was short of stature and the table was 
tall and covered with dishes to be washed — oh, 
so many, many of them, ranging all the way 
from the glasses, which to the undiscriminating 




DISH-WASHING 

mind of childhood it was a work of supereroga- 
tion to dip into water again, to the spoons — 
and everybody used so many — the plates, the 
platters and the heavy vegetable dishes coated 
with a hard, grey, "goose-flesh," down to the 
coarse cooking vessels. 

But my dissatisfaction was chiefly because I 
was a feeble, ailing child; furthermore, being of 
an imaginative and inventive turn, at the time 
the dishes were to be washed I always wanted 
to do something else. I recall having success- 
fully relieved the tedium of rocking the baby by 
drawing the cradle up to the open door — in the 
absence of the family, of course — tying the 
clothes line to it, then descending the steep back 
steps, carrying the line with me to the farthest 
limits of the side yard, and from this safe dis- 
tance, with the protests of the baby materially 
diminished, rocking it jerkily under the pleasant 
shade of an apple tree. A Jerk too much upset 
the cradle and the baby rolled out, luckily un- 
hurt, which ended the experiment abruptly. But 



29 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

while it lasted it had all the excitement of novelty 
and the enjoyment of uncertainty. 

We were musically inclined, I and the younger 
sister who "wiped," while I "washed," and we 
endeavored to throw a glamour over our task by 
rendering selections from a long repertoire — 
ballads, hymns, national airs, and what were then 
known as "Sunday School songs." These, at 
that period, were peculiarly gloomj^ chiefly re- 
minders in verse of sudden and untimely death. 
The singing was loud — there were no pianissimo 
passages, even in the most funereal of the Sun- 
day school songs, as we interpreted them. We 
sang energetically and we unconsciously kept 
time to the measure, especially in those passages 
marked ritardando on the score, holding dish- 
cloth and tea-towel immovable at the whole notes 
and dotted half notes. By this arrangement we 
prolonged the dish-washing out of all reason. 

Once the grandmother, of beloved memory, 
came for a visit — her sweet voice sounding in 
my ears, and her gentle, benign face rising out of 
the long, long vanished past as I write. In the 

30 



DISH-WASHING 

midst of one of our customary duets over the 
dish-pan she appeared at the kitchen door and 
said: "Children, you sing beautifully, but sup* 
pose you finish your work first and see how 
quickly you can do it. Then, you can have all 
the afternoon for singing." 

We looked at each other astonished. It was 
a brilliant, new idea that had never occurred to 
us. We put the suggestion into immediate prac- 
tice, and the dishes were washed, wiped and put 
away in a jiffy. 

But — we did not then care to sing — nor did 
we, ever again — "over the teacups." We dis- 
covered that expedition was better than music 
on such occasions, and we profited by the grand- 
mother's gentle hint. 

There is, perhaps, nothing about the work of 
the house which the average woman dislikes so 
much as dish-washing. There are few who do not 
object to it, and still fewer who say that they 
actually like it. They are seldom believed — 
like the people who insist that they love Wagner 
and Browning, and yet want professional expla- 

31 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

nation to make all their hidden meanings clear. 
It assuredly is a part of housekeeping at which 
mere man, left to himself for a time — on his 
camping expeditions, or while his wife is visiting 
her family — boggles disgracefully. The sticky 
dishes and dingy glass usually speak for them- 
selves. Occasionally, however, the guilty one 
confesses how he managed it, and with the arro- 
gance of his sex, even recommends his method 
over that brought to perfection by the wisdom 
of the feminine mind, from time immemorial. 

If at home, his suggestion is, paper — wrap- 
ping paper preferred, but if that is not obtain- 
able, then newspapers, and that, too, in this de- 
generate age when they run to full-page illus- 
trations that are largely smears of printer's ink. 

If camping, his method is to use sand, swiping 
the things round and round, with a brisk polish- 
ing off by way of a coup de main. So firm is the 
operator in the belief that this is the true and 
only way, that, in addition to discoursing at 
length on dish-washing made eas}^ he can hardly 
be restrained from putting a cart-load of sand 

32 



DISH-WASHING 

into the cellar with the winter coal. But there are 
others — of the same superior sex — who frankly 
acknowledge their total inability to cope with the 
dish-washing problem. Not many, of course, but 
a few, frank, fearless, honest souls who stand 
out in bright refulgence, have admitted that their 
powers have limitations. I once saw indications 
of such a spirit, and indications only, as is usually 
the case among those who deal even on terms of 
familiarity with spirits. 

It was in far-off Australia. We came upon 
reminders of an abandoned camp, beside a stream 
under a eucalyptus tree. There were traces of 
extinguished fire where the "billy" had been 
boiled, empty and rusting "tins" of many dimen- 
sions, blackened and battered cooking vessels and 
broken dishes. It resembled a battle ground 
after a hard fight. But the vanquished ones 
were not ashamed of their defeat ; they manfully 
— or unmanfully — acknowledged it, for they 
had left nailed up against the tree a board 
whereon was inscribed, plainly and legibly, 
this legend : * ' Wanted : A General. ' ' 



33 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

A "general" did not in this context mean a 
commanding officer to reorganize the demoralized 
forces. It is the antipodean term for maid-of- 
all-work. 

The woman of some sorrows and many vexa- 
tions knows well that the devices enumerated 
above are in reality faulty inventions of minds 
rebelling, for the moment, against their environ- 
ments. She is satisfied that the sink — if it 
has been constructed for a woman below the pro- 
portions of a lady of Brobdingnag — an ample 
pan, a long-handled mop, a nice and saving soap- 
shaker, are the indispensable accompaniments of 
good dish- washing — and, of course, plenty of 
scalding hot water. It is the instinct of man to 
simplify everything but technical phraseology. 
This he clings to with the tenacity of an uncon- 
querable will; because, like the mystery that en- 
shrouded the Delphic oracle, it helps him keep the 
upper hand with the masses, deluding them into 
the belief that, after all, there may be something 
in it, and filling them with an unreasoning ad- 
miration for a mind that is not unbalanced by so 

34 



DISH-WASHING 

much vain repetition. Hence the sand-and-news- 
paper dish "cleaning." 

I frankly confess that I am one of the few 
women who love Wagner and Browning and 
have no antipathy to dish-washing. Not that I 
love it; but there is a real satisfaction in remov- 
ing the chaos of an abandoned dinner-table, car- 
rying the dishes away and "scraping" them in the 
kitchen or butler's pantry, for cooks quit, even 
in houses- 'that have a butler's pantry — and ar- 
ranging them in order for purification. Polished 
glass, shining silver, glossy and burnished plates 
upon whose surface not even the sensitive fin- 
gers of a blind man could discover the slightest 
semblance of roughness, all set forth in chaste 
and spotless groups, fill my soul with satisfac- 
tion not untinctured by pride. Even the potato 
masher, so slippery and sticky, and the big, dull 
lid of the stew-pan that has lost its brightness 
through age — like folks — I can contemplate 
with serene approval after their cleansing, though 
I am free to admit that it is the kind of approval 
one feels who has done one of those trying stints 

35 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

that can be classified as duty — such as paying a 
visit to a dull, censorious neighbor, or bearing 
patiently with a man who sniffs. 

The whole secret of successful and not dis- 
agreeable dish-washing is that imparted by the 
shrewd old grandmother so long ago — expedi- 
tion, combined with thoroughness; next to that, 
the right sort of getting ready. There are weak 
and self-indulgent persons who "pile up" a whole 
day's dishes and leave them until the next morn- 
ing. They love to sit around the table, the meal 
ended, and gossip ; or, after breakfast, slip away 
to "glance over the morning paper" before the 
library fire — an occupation which means read- 
ing it all, carefully, to the last bargain adver- 
tisement and the last sentence of the dryest edi- 
torial. But all this immoral and shiftless pro- 
crastination brings its own punishment. AH the 
while one is gossiping, no matter how congeni- 
ally, the eye wanders over the waiting dishes ; and 
during the narrative of battle, murder and sud- 
den death, not forgetting the divorces, now recog- 
nized as the only legitimate "news," there is still 

36 



DISH- WASHING 

a subconscious realization that the dishes are still 
waiting and will never betake themselves to the 
kitchen without human intervention. The "con- 
trols" of even the most advanced spiritual me- 
diums seem to do nothing more than raise heavy 
tables from the floor, which is not of the slightest 
practical use to anybody. When they so far de- 
velop as to send the dishes to the kitchen sink 
and back again, ready for future use, there will 
be an immediate accession to the ranks of earnest 
inquirers, followed no doubt by many sound con- 
versions. But, as the young sophomore orator 
would remark — "that time is not yet." 

The only method that is both sure and certain 
is to rise at once; seize the dishes firmly and re- 
move them, no matter how much you may want 
to know what happened to Ellen Jones then, or 
who was elected President of the Mothers' Con- 
gress on the last ballot. Place glass and silver 
scrupulously to themselves, neither chipping the 
one by piling it together, nor dinting and bend- 
ing the other under the soup plates or heavy chop 
platter; then arrange cups, saucers, small dishes 



37 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and plates in proper order. The true dish-washer 
stands self-confessed in these nice preliminaries. 
If silver, glass and china are scattered about, 
higgledy-piggledy; if the plates are not freed 
from every trace of food than can be removed by 
conscientious scraping, then one knows what to 
expect — dish-washing degraded to the merest 
savage rite. A glance at the dish-pan reveals 
there a mixture — "thick and slab" — as that 
brewed by the witches in Macbeth. The tea- 
towels are also eloquent witnesses and, like the 
mistress's pocket handkerchiefs, if possible, 
should be many, fine, and white as snow. And 
this, too, is achieved only by willing hands, plenty 
of soap and hot water without limit. 

When the rule given is followed scrupulously, 
like the musical diversion I have described, the 
interest in Ellen Jones and the doings of the 
Mothers' Congress will, possibly, have quite 
evaporated, but how pleasant the kitchen looks! 
So pleasant that, for the moment, you forget that 
the same process must be repeated to-morrow, 
and through all the to-morrows, for years to 

38 



DISH-WASHING 

come. For it will not be in our time that the race 
will be sustained on concentrated food pellets, 
carried in the glove, like a street car fare, or in 
the waistcoat pocket — an evolution destined to 
banish the kitchen and all that therein is. 



39 




IV 



Sweeping— Past and Present 

HO can explain the dismalness of 
dust ? It is an implied reminder — 
never welcome except in prolonged 
sea-sickness, or face-ache — of the 
final end of all mortality; of the 
most depressing and least uplifting 
texts in the Bible, and the sadness of the burial 
service. 

The relation between ideas and their obscure 
origin is so subtle that psychology devotes many 
abstruse chapters to this one theme alone. At 
any rate, dust is undeniably the outward and 
visible sign of neglect and decay. 




40 



SWEEPING — PAST AND PRESENT 

It is terribly dej)ressing to come home from a 
holiday, spent in the clean forest, or at the still 
more cleanly sea-shore, before Euphemia has ar- 
rived to set the house in order and wind the 
clocks. 

The dust that has gathered on the window-sills, 
on the piano and the banisters, is so very dusty 
— so much greyer and grittier than that which 
settles down from day to day, and which is from 
day to day removed. It mournfully indicates 
that the holidays are over, with all their lounging 
and sailing, hammocks and novels, and that, with 
the broom and the dust-pan again to the fore, 
the serious business of life begins once more — 
getting the children into school, the fall sewing, 
the revival of the club and the missionary society, 
and the ordering of three meals daily. 

There is nothing for it but to face the dust-pan 
boldly and be sure that the new broom sweeps 
clean. 

It is remarkable what a deal there is about 
brooms in folk-lore and literature. The mischief- 
making witch of our beloved old fairy tales could 

41 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

mount her broomstick and whisk herself oat of 
danger in the twinkling of an eye. The old 
woman who swept the cobwebs out of the sky 
must have been a benefactress in her time — a 
vast improvement on some municipal street 
sweeping that could be mentioned. The broom 
came up many times in the Salem trials, while 
those of Joe and the Marchioness are still dear to 
the few and dwindling readers of Dickens. 

Sang Puck in the revels of "A Midsummer 
Night's Dream": 

"Not a mouse 
Shall disturb this hallowed house ; 
I am sent with broom before 
To sweep the dust behind the door." 

The construction of the last clause in the above 
quotation should commend itself to the many 
classes that spend long hours in clearing up liter- 
ary obscurity for the less intelligent readers; it 
would lend itself most suggestively to debate as 
to whether the "tricksy sprite" had been sent to 
sweep the dust behind the door, after Euphemia's 
manner, when she is in a hurry, or frorn behind 

42 



SWEEPING — PAST AND PRESENT 

the door, where she has absent-mindedly left it. 

There are clean, conservative souls who regard 
the patent sweeper with loathing. They are the 
severely thorough who still rigorously fell all 
seams that ought to be felled; who despise all 
easy ways of doing things and who will reach 
Heaven, at last, only by the narrowest path of 
all, because they prefer it. Their brooms, singly 
and collectively, are a credit to them. They never 
shed straws, or run to a sharp peak, like an in- 
dex finger pointing skyward on an old-fashioned 
tombstone. A string is run through a hole in 
the handle of each broom, and by this it is hung 
on its own nail, when it does not stand, as a re- 
spectable broom should, reversed in its proper 
place behind the pantry door. And it is washed 

— roundly scrubbed — with soap and water, like 
a submissive child. Then, no matter how stubby 

— evenly stubby — it becomes from long use, it 
is never soiled — not even the last remnant that is 
finally committed to the furnace. 

The well kept broom is as efficacious as it is 
what the country newspapers call "nice-appear- 

43 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ing." There is no corner that it does not rind — 
under the bed, under the bureau, along the base- 
board — and where it has gone a West Point in- 
spector might pass his white-gloved fingers and 
find them still immaculate. 

Hardwood floors have certainly simplified the 
business of sweeping, though the removing and 
beating of rugs could hardly be recommended as 
light and easy employment for decayed gentle- 
women. The great compensation is, that when 
rugs have been carried out of doors and well 
beaten the house is really clean. Microbes have 
been carried away bodily — if they do not float 
back through the open windows — your neigh- 
bors', or your own. 

It is too much to hope, with a people so fond 
of change as are Americans, that the fashion of 
rugs and polished floors will remain. But, we 
can make the most of it while it lasts ; rejoice that, 
through its agency, the most malignant feature 
of house-cleaning has been held, for a time, in 
abeyance, and that the art of darning holes with 
carpet ravellings bids fair to become as obsolete 
as sampler marking. 

44 



SWEEPING — PAST AND PRESENT 

But there are still many carpeted floors, and 
these yet demand the ministration of the broom or 
carpet sweeper. It will be some time before the 
vacuum cleaner will come into universal use. 

The charges brought against the carpet sweeper 
are fairly well sustained. I have seen rooms and 
furniture so battered and beaten by it that one 
might almost imagine that a herd of hard-hoofed 
quadrupeds had been turned loose in and 
amongst them, there to gambol at will. 

When Euphemia is not watched, she likes to 
throw open the windows, tie the curtains in hard 
knots, and sweep amongst the furniture like some 
large, square craft navigating an intricate archi- 
pelago. Her guiding principle is to sweep 
around, and by no means move, things. In this 
exercise she raises clouds of dust that collect 
again on walls, ceilings and cornice, like a lasting 
haze, the obscurity increasing with the length of 
her term of service. 

Of course, no intelligent woman need be told 
that every chair and table should be wiped, pol- 
ished and removed, the mantel cleared and the 

45 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

pictures covered. Then the carpet — if there is 
one — should first be sprinkled with damp tea 
leaves or bits of damp paper, and brushed firmly 
and thoroughly with a clean, solid broom. In 
some houses even this careful method is tabooed, 
and carpets, or matting, are wiped with soft 
cloths. But while the English housemaid will 
still creep about obediently, on hands and knees, 
with her big, inconvenient brush that wakes you 
at daybreak, whacking the banisters as she 
*'does" the stairs, there is something in the free 
air of the Republic that raises the opposition of 
her sister, American or naturalized. She de- 
mands a broom, or gives notice, and she usually 
gets the broom. , 

As in the kitchen, when the dishes are washed 
and put away, so, after the weekly sweeping 
there is a temporary brightness that one wishes 
might last; fresh flowers in the vases, a new 
lustre on the bric-a-brac, and the fragrance 
of pure, cool air that has blown through the 
house. Cleanliness is "akin to godliness," and 
this should be the special text for sweeping day. 

46 




Some Reflections About 
Dusting 

As to the respective merits of 
dust-cloths and brushes, competent 
authorities differ as irreconcilably 
as they do over the many ways of 
making coffee and washing flan- 
nels. The advocate of the feather- 
duster, who is the natural enemy of the dust- 
cloth, no matter if it is of softest silk or brier- 
stitched cheesecloth hung in the chimney corner 
in a bag embroidered with a motto, asserts that 
the heavy hand of Euphemia scouring it round 
and round leaves lines and zig-zags on furniture 

47 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and woodwork like those that flying cinders 
groove on the windows of a Pullman car. 

On the other hand, a model housekeeper — an 
Oliio housekeeper — declares that the feather- 
duster is put to a far better use when worn as a 
head-dress by a South Sea Islander or a North 
American Indian. Furthermore, a competent, 
though popular writer on health and hygiene, has 
sounded the warning: "Let sleeping microbes 
lie" — over doors and windows and other difficult 
places, rather than disturb and scatter them, to 
be innocently swallowed by members of the fam- 
ily •— all through the agency of the feather-duster. 
Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to say that 
dust, thus disturbed, is not removed ; that it rises 
and settles again ; and so certain was one feather- 
duster opponent of this, that, detecting Euphe- 
mia furtively dusting the rungs of a chair in the 
prohibited manner, she lost her temper, and at 
the same time her dignity, jerked the brush from 
the maid's hands, broke the handle in two and 
tossed the fragments into the grate, exclaiming: 

"That thing shall never come into my house 

48 



REFLECTIONS ON DUSTING 

again!*' She added, being wonderfully bold and 
fearless, "If you disobey me again, you go." 

Euphemia did not disobey her again, be- 
cause she did not remain long enough to dust 
another room with a brush, or without it. In her 
own pertinent and impertinent language, and 
with the match factory and the mitten factory 
advertising daily for hands, Euphemia said "she 
didn't have to." 

The summing up seems to admit some argu- 
ment on both sides. The cloth, no matter how 
soft, does leave grooves and lines; but, with a 
light touch this does not happen, and a dexterous 
finger can introduce it into the tracery and lat- 
tice work of the imitation Chippendale now in 
vogue. Furthermore, dust allowed to remain in 
these lurking places becomes damp and black 
and then solidifies, until it is as hard as the wood 
to which it is attached and can be removed only 
by thorough redressing. Another item in favor 
of the dust-cloth is its washableness. 

To the model housekeeper, and to her humble 
and less successful imitator, there is a sense of 

49 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

comfortable abundance in a whole shelfful of 
hemmed dust-cloths, as^ fresh and clean and as 
neatly folded as the table-cloths and bed-linen, 
and to be as often changed. These perfect dust- 
cloths are not for a moment to be confounded 
with those of coarser quality, for commoner use, 
and much less with the shabby rags that leave 
trails of lint and thread everywhere. 

I refer only to those that go to the wash every 
week in generous relays, and are as smoothly 
ironed as the pillow-cases. 

The feather-duster admits of no such treat- 
ment, but it will still be favored by those who, 
with good reason, are afraid of step-ladders. As 
for disturbed and scattered microbes, they are 
everywhere, it is urged ; there is no escaping them, 
and a few million more or less floating about do 
not appear to shorten materially the allotted span 
of human life. There is in hotels, and perhaps in 
those houses where every member of the family, 
including the baby, has a suite of rooms and an 
automobile, a huge machine by which both 
the sweeping and dusting are done. This is the 

50 



REFLECTIONS ON DUSTING 

vacuum cleaner, to which I have already respect- 
fully alluded. It arrives with considerable clat- 
ter and confusion, mysteriously covered with can- 
vas, which appeals strongly to the imagination 
and inspires one with distinct doubts and fears. 
There are usually two men or more in charge, 
and as it is trundled across the threshold one 
might well mistake it for the apparatus of a 
surgeon about to undertake a major operation, 
or some sort of a contrivance for inflicting in- 
stantaneous and painless death. There is a still 
more imposing variety, common in cities, oper- 
ated by a steam engine which, of course, stands 
outside in the street, and from which lengths of 
hose are carried into the house, and from room to 
room. The engine outside puffs and pants, the 
dust is gathered up and forced into the recep- 
tacle — also outside — and when the house has 
been gone over from attic to cellar, the hose is 
reeled up, the engine trundles down the street, 
having performed its whole duty, like a dull but 
useful citizen. The automatic method, like cre- 
mation, is steadily growing in favor, and may one 

51 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

day be in general use, but to me a room cleaned 
in this way has none of the freshness and bright- 
ness that follows old-fashioned sweeping and 
dusting with a cloth. Hand- work in dusting will 
probably always be preferred by the fastidious, 
as in the case of the superior arts — painting, 
carving and embroidery. The hand is the natural 
tool of the brain, and there is an intimate rela- 
tion between them. Where the task is bungled — 
no matter what it is — there is almost sure to be 
behind the clumsy fingers a turgid, intractable 
mind. To realize this is the beginning of all do-' 
mestie wisdom. Euphemia, washing the French 
gilt clock with Sapolio, or scouring the porcelain 
bathtubs in the same way, is thus logically ex- 
plained. 

Machines will never mend matters, whether 
propelled by gasoline, compressed air, or electric- 
ity, while the same limited intelligence is in 
charge. The real domestic problem must, after 
all, be solved by hand, and complicated modern 
appliances seem often to introduce into the house 
only a new element of bother. 

62 




VI 

The Pantry Shelves and Door 

THE pantry shelves are often the 
foraging ground of many preda- 
tory species, even in what appear 
to be well kept houses. Flies buzz 
angrily and throw themselves 
against the screen outside the win- 
dow, lured by the smell of dainties and ready to 
force an entrance at the first opportunity. 

Here, if permitted, the horrid cockroach 
prowls, tainting what he does not eat, and the 
huge, bloated water-beetle, glossy and black, 
greedily joining the others in the work of spoli- 



53 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ation. Then there are ants, big and little, black 
and red, large and small, and, last of all — mice. 

The hatred of mice, except for their destruc- 
tiveness, has always seemed to me as senseless as 
the panic of a horse that takes fright and runs 
away for just nothing at all. The mouse is not 
dangerous. His bite, unlike that of his repulsive 
kinsman, the rat, is not venomous. His little 
body is a model of grace and elegance, from the 
fine, pink-veined ears to his delicate and exquis- 
ite feet; his soft, silken coat is beautiful, and his 
eyes are bright and intelligent. He never at- 
tacks, unless brought to bay, and even then he 
gives one the merest nip, that does not hurt much 
more than a pin scratch. I learned to tolerate, 
if not like, mice, from a habit I had, when a child, 
of taming and petting them, and carrying them 
with me to school to beguile the ennui of the 
multiplication table and the parts of speech. I 
found them peaceable and companionable in their 
little cages, which were securely hidden in my 
desk, among my neglected and ill-used books. 

But, having thus done justice to the attractions 

54 



THE PANTRY 

of mice, I am forced to agree with their enemies 
that they are wholly out of place on the pantry 
shelves. Their footprints, though pretty from 
an artistic standpoint, are not appetizing or 
decorative on butter or cake icing. For the im- 
pudent invader of this forbidden ground, there 
can be nothing but the trap ; but it should be one 
that does its work speedily and humanely. Some 
of the devices used by women who profess to be 
tender-hearted are instruments of genuine tor- 
ture — ^^even those recommended by members of 
the Humane Society, who talk vehemently 
against cruelty to animals and the wearing of 
machine-made bird's wings in hats. 

There are various things that will drive away 
the smaller vermin — borax, hellebore, corrosive 
sublimate, and, it is said, the fresh parings of 
cucumbers. Large black ants, it is well known, 
devour the small red ones — seemingly drawing 
the color line, for they never appear to molest the 
smaller species of their own complexion. 

Most vermin love darkness because their deeds 
are evil — a proposition that is applicable to 

55 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

many creeping things. For this reason, every 
pantry should have a large window which will 
freely admit light and air. There should also be 
a cupboard with solid doors for jellies and such 
supplies as are chemically affected by too much 
sunshine. 

Plates for cooking — not those that properly 
belong in the china closet — should be stood upon 
edge within a cleat close to the back of the shelf, 
while bowls and cups and pudding dishes should 
be turned upside down. All this is j)erfectly well 
known to most housekeepers, but not all carry it 
into effect. 

The upper shelf in the pantry is very often a 
catch-all. There are put away the cracked dishes 
kept for old associations, the pink-flowered sugar 
bowl that belonged to one's grandmother ; the tea- 
pot with the broken nose, that was great-aunt 
Honoria's ; the old grimy candle-moulds that did 
duty long before the days of kerosene and gas; 
boxes of dusty bottles, forgotten balls of twine 
and ancient parcels of garden seeds that are al- 
ways spilling. 

56 



THE PANTRY 

One reason for all this flotsam and jetsam is, 
that the top shelf is hard to get at. The insecur- 
ity of the step-ladder has been noted, and in 
addition to this grave fault it must be carried 
from the cellar or the back passage and climbed. 
The lower shelves, too, must be cleared to receive 
the rubbish that must be lifted down to be sorted 
or removed. So dreadful are accidents with step- 
ladders that, before one begins this, one feels im- 
pelled to make one's will, or, at least, to study- 
minutely all rules of "First Aid to the Injured." 
This is the true and real reason why the upper 
pantry shelf is occasionally neglected, in the 
houses of otherwise thorough housekeepers. If 
some person could invent one that could be raised 
and lowered at will by a set of smoothly working 
pulleys, warranted never to get out of order, his 
fortune would be made and the top pantry shelf 
would no longer burden the mind of any but theo- 
retical domestic economists. 

The slovenly habit of leaving food uncovered 
— except meats that are to be served cold, which 
should be allowed to cool thoroughly after cook- 

5T 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ing — is a habit to which Euphemia is prone. It 
is an invitation to mouse, ant and beetle to a 
bountiful and free entertainment. A few crumbs 
of cake, or pastry, a bowl of cold potatoes over 
which no one has thought to place a protecting 
saucer, the remains of the steak, a little jelly in a 
lidless tumbler, a spoonful of preserve in a glass 
dish — all are temptations which no mortal mouse 
or ant can resist. A pantry where such neglect 
is permitted inevitably becomes a rich field for 
the entomologist, but it must be spoken of under 
one's breath by persons who are averse to com- 
bining the wonders of Nature with their daily 
food. 

The housekeeper has another and almost hope- 
less pantry difficulty with which to contend. It 
is usually desired to keep the supplies cool that 
are placed there. Who has ever been able to 
train Euphemia to close the door behind her as 
she goes and comes, carrying a cup of flour or 
a brewing of tea? No one — if she tell the truth, 
the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A 
swing door acquires all manner of creakiness. It 

58 



THE PANTRY 

screams if you touch it, and will seldom or never 
close tightly after Euphemia has kicked it for a 
week. Some one has suggested that she might 
be reminded of her neglect by means of an ex- 
plosive attachment, like the signal torpedoes that 
are placed upon railroad tracks as a warning. 
But what would it avail with Euphemia, after 
the first few days — she who must be called regu- 
larly every morning, although she sleeps with 
an alarm clock under her pillow of such calibre 
that it rouses everybody but herself in the house ? 
No; the only sure means would be for some 
reliable member of the family to take her stand 
beside the pantry door and close it, with her own 
hand, every time Euphemia entered and emerged, 
and this, in time, would prove monotonous and 
confining. 



59 




VII 



A Few Thoughts About 
the Cellar 



HUMAN beings, like rodents, have 
had, always, an inclination to keep 
their stores underground. Princes 
and others favored of fortune, in 
the "Arabian Nights," frequently 
found, just at the right moment, 
convenient flights of steps leading down to sub- 
terranean palaces, or gardens wherein jewelled 
trees gave of their perennial riches, and where 
air and sunlight seemed to be superfluous. 

The delightful old pirates, whose manners 
were often perfect, after capturing and scuttling 



60 



THE CELLAR 

a ship, habitually went ashore to bury their 
plunder in the earth. 

We know it is there that Nature has hidden her 
rarest and most lasting treasures, apparently to 
force men to dig and sweat for them, and thus, 
for the time being, keeping them harmlessly em- 
ployed. The cellar has always been the storage 
place for creature comforts of many kinds, be- 
cause, in the primitive days, when we travelled by 
stage-coach, subscribed to a weekly paper, and 
looked forward to the arrival of the new almanac, 
it was the only security against the heat of Au- 
gust and the frost of December. 

There was a real charm about an old-fashioned 
cellar. How cool it was in midsummer, and how 
warm when the snow lay deep on the ground! 
The atmosphere was a perfectly blended frag- 
rance of good things : yellow cream, sweet butter, 
honey in jars, and, in the apple compartment, 
bins of all the best varieties. 

How well I recall the bushels of small crimson 
"Milams," of waxen pink-and-yellow "Sheep- 
nose," of the mellow and spicy *'Bellflowers," 

61 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and the ''Vandevere," unsurpassed for pies and 
mince-meat. How we hunted and sorted them 
over, for the very choicest specimens to give the 
teacher, as a peace-offering or as a means of cur- 
rying favor, or to chnch a hard bargain with 
Emily Ellen in a trade for her depleted water- 
color box. The bins ran around the walls; the 
milk pans were set in shining rows on the shelves, 
and there were separate spaces for the less invit- 
ing potatoes and carrots. Collections of many- 
hued jellies, rich peach and cherry preserves, 
made by the old recipe, "a pound of fruit to a 
pound of sugar," that "kept" from their own ex- 
ceeding richness like Oriental sweets, crowded 
the long, swinging shelf. Big, round pumpkins, 
showing a rich purplish bloom on their yellow 
surface, heaped in convenient corners, breathed 
intimations ojp Thanksgiving Day. In jars al- 
most as ample as those to which the cunning Mor- 
giana devoted her attention, were stored gallons 
of spiced mince-meat, sausage and "head-cheese" 
— the rich mixtures with which our grandmoth- 
ers ruined their digestion and set their children's 
teeth on edge. 



THE CELLAR 

^ There was no end to the resources of an old- 
fashioned cellar. It had its own catastrophes, 
too, like most things mundane. One that I re- 
member best was subject to being flooded by 
heavy rainfalls. I used to lie awake listening to 
the dull beat of the deluge, knowing that there 
would be difHculty in getting the supplies for 
breakfast, and that the swarthy "Mexican Pete," 
who wore earrings, and had an insatiable appetite 
for red pepper, would arrive as soon as the storm 
was over, if sober, to pump out the water. I re- 
call, too, tubs and tables afloat, and the hurried 
removal of spoilable things that had not been 
placed permanently above high water mark — as 
had the apple bins, and the big jars. I also have 
fond recollections of the clever cat named "Sebit- 
uane" (by my mother shortened to ''Sooby") 
for the hospitable African chief who befriended 
Livingstone. Unlike most cats he was a fearless 
swimmer. One night he leaped into the cellar 
when the water was too deep to wade. He pad- 
dled vigorously to the cellar steps, reached the 
intervening pantry, there knocked down a pan 

63 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

of flour and presented himself, to our intense de- 
light, much abashed and well dredged. Another 
bath was required, but for several days his black 
coat was quite stiff and sticky. 

After Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote her 
"Lady of Quality," there was quite a furore 
for exploring the cellars of old London houses. 
And what well-preserved secrets did they not 
unearth? I was told that in one mansion whose 
mistress had died the previous century in the 
odor of sanctity two skeletons were dug up, 
buried many feet below the pavement. In 
her own beautiful old house in Portland Place, 
Mrs. Burnett occasionally conducted favored 
guests through what she called her "Tower of 
London Kitchen." At the fireplace an ox might 
have been roasted, and the stores in the wine-bins, 
in the heyday of its glory, might have quenched 
the thirst of Falstaff 's army. 

This cellar was much below the level of the 
street, and there were rooms without number, 
one beyond the other, with floors and ceilings of 

64 



THE CELLAR 

stone, the latter vaulted and groined like the 
ceilings of a crypt. 

In the rear, farthest back of all, dark and 
breathless as a tomb, the use of which no man 
ever knew, was a mysterious cell. It was this 
sinister hiding-place that suggested the story and 
the concealment that followed the tragedy. 

The cellar of a modern house has no traditions. 
There are focused many inventions, that, while 
intermittently beneficent, have long spells of the 
utmost malignancy. There is the furnace in 
which the fire goes out on mornings when the 
mercury stands at ten degrees below zero, and 
burns luridly in the unseasonable, warmth of a 
hot day in March; the hot water plant, or the 
steam instalment, subject to what Carlyle called 
awful "gurgling and gluttering," and occasional 
bursting; the gas meter that keeps on steadily 
measuring hundreds and thousands of cubic feet 
while the family are away for the summer va- 
cation, just as it does when the house is filled 
with guests, or Eupheraia is burning it all night 
in her room because she is afraid of ghosts. 

65 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

There, too, is the water meter, to which will be 
added in the near future an air meter, after a 
syndicate with a billion dollars capitalization shall 
have monopolized the atmosphere; with other 
already existent indicators, reminding one, as 
they noiselessly perform their work, how riches 
take wings and a moderate income evaporates. 

The bins once devoted to the "Vandeveres" 
and "Rambo, " whose praises have been cele- 
brated, are now filled with coal or dusty coke, 
outdoing in ugliness the furnace above mentioned 
with its ugly brick foundation, or other heating 
apparatus, with all its ramifications of pipes and 
valves. The top of the furnace does make a good 
warm bed for the cat, where the masonry is of 
proper thickness, but that is the most that can be 
said for it. I have always detested all the im- 
plements that go with a furnace, because they are 
so big and sooty, so heavy, awkward and hard to 
lift: the long poker for scratching out jagged 
"clinkers" that multiply so fast and which though 
white hot keep on absorbing and never giving 
out heat ; the capacious shovel that the man han- 



66 



THE CELLAR 

dies so airily — when he can be induced to handle 
it at all — and which serves, as nothing else can, 
to remind frail woman of the pitiless limitations 
of sex. 

Then there is such a bewildering array of 
dampers to be regulated in all kinds of weather, 
one quarter closed, half closed, shut tight — a 
mistake with which puts out the fire, or fills the 
house with poisonous gas. I have dwelt upon 
the vagaries of the furnace in weather totally 
unsuited to those vagaries — the scorching heat 
it emits in the early autumn and spring when but 
little is wanted, and its sulking when that heat 
is needed; and I have always hoped that some 
plan might be discovered for storing caloric un- 
til it was required. Then there would be no 
such thing as a bad furnace. The heat which it 
often gives out below stairs and nowhere else, 
is also a fault, almost human in its imperfection. 
This has necessitated the construction of a cold 
chamber, else the potatoes will sprout, the apples 
shrivel and decay. Thus one so-called im- 
provement brings on another, like the conse- 

6T 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

quence of bad deeds, and so fast do they multi- 
ply that it is hard, at last, to distinguish the 
original from its consequences. 

The most that can be said for the furnace, 
from an aesthetic standpoint, is, that when the 
wind is in the right direction, and the door can 
be left open, it sends a cheerful glow into the 
dark corners. And if it is responsible for effac- 
ing the hearthstone of poet and painter, it is 
much more comfortable to sit around a register, 
or beside a radiator, than constantly to feed a 
fire and carry out ashes. But when this is said, 
all is said. 

Many cellars, or basements, have laundry 
attachments. With their stationary tubs fitted 
out with faucets for hot and cold water, the stove 
that keeps the wash-day smell out of the house, 
they are excellent things — if a laundress can 
be found. Nowadays, in her efforts to elude 
pursuit, she is like a fugitive fleeing and hiding 
from merited justice. 

If she is white, her children have the measles. 
If she is black, she does her work between "pro- 

68 



THE CELLAR 

tracted meetin's'* and the funerals of relatives — 
a connection so enormous that it never is lessened 
by continuous and frequently recurring deaths. 

Even when she arrives, she must be allowed 
generous intervals in which to smoke her pipe 
and meditate. With her, washing day and iron- 
ing day, like the eternal Sabbaths of the hymn, 
"never end," but lap over into each other the 
whole year round. Still, it is something that she 
and her ways, which are not always "ways of 
pleasantness," are underground, where she may 
be left in solitude to smoke and soliloquize, with- 
out interrupting the established order on the 
floors above. 

In considering this aspect of the cellar and 
its possibilities, putting all prejudice aside, the 
German semi-annual wash-day has much to re- 
commend it — a mighty splashing, and clear- 
starching, twice a year, and then — peace. 



69 




VIII 

Up in the Attic 

AN ATTIC, dear to memory, was 
reached by a flight of enclosed 
steps from "the long bedroom." 
In the centre of the space one 
could stand upright and not touch 
the rafters, while the slope of the 
roof lowered gradually on either side until it 
touched the eaves. There was no real floor in 
the attic, only narrow, rough boards laid along 
the centre that clattered as you walked and gave 
you a delightful sense of insecurity. We were 
always cautioned to keep on the boards, and were 



UP IN THE ATTIC 

held in check by a terrible tale of a "distant" 
cousin who inadvertently stepped off, and whose 
foot went through the ceiling of the room below, 
bringing a bother of plasterers to repair dam- 
ages, at much expense and inconvenience. What 
would have happened had the hole been larger 
and the "distant" cousin dropped down bodily 
with a crash, we often imagined — a disquieting 
but salutary reflection. There were always fam- 
ilies of fluffy kittens in the garret, behind boxes 
pushed back close under the eaves; and we 
peered around and over the boxes, thrilled with 
delicious fear at good old Tabby's eyes blazing 
in the dark. It was a harrowing catastrophe 
when once two of her many litters fell down be- 
tween the plastering and the weather-boarding 
and had to be rescued by the intervention of the 
carpenter. 

We could hear the scratching claws of pink- 
footed pigeons running over the shingles, and 
by putting our ears close to the weatherboarding 
we could hear the grumbling of the mothers and 
the petulant squealing of the squabs in the nests 

71 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

outside in the cornice — squabs doomed, alas I to 
furnish forth the most delectable pigeon pies that 
ever came steaming to the table. 

In the summer, wasps came flying through the 
open window with their burdens of lint and mud 
for the nests which they built along the rafters. 
Big bunches of dried pennyroyal, hoarhound and 
catnip were hung up at intervals from these same 
rafters. Often were these supplies drawn from ; 
when the children had colds, or their measles 
"would not come out," or the newest baby was 
getting its first taste of human ailment in the 
throes of colic. These herbs gave out a dusty 
odor to the old attic that was pleasant enough. 

The battered, hairy trunks that were stored in 
the place, to say nothing of other receptacles, 
were full of old clothes and parcels of calico, 
silk and woolen scraps — the "pieces" that we 
coveted and which we relied upon to replenish 
our dolls' wardrobes. There were queer old hats 
and bonnets that we used when we wanted 
to "dress up," and a chest, the lid of which we 
lifted with bated breath, whenever we could sum- 

79 



UP IN THE ATTIC 

mon up enough courage, getting a fearsome 
glimpse of yellow bones and grinning skull — for 
the grandfather was a country doctor and the un- 
articulated skeleton was a survival of his student 
days. There were also piles of medical pam- 
phlets bound in glossy paper — white, yellow, 
green and blue, out of which we clothed our pa- 
per dolls with surpassing magnificence. From 
the dusty window we could see the flash of the 
cannon when the salute was fired on the Fourth 
of July, out on the village common. When tired 
of playing there were snug nooks where divans 
could bd arranged from spare pillows and dis- 
carded comforters and where we read "Puss in 
Boots," "Hop o'My Thumb" or "Swiss Family 
Robinson" to the patter of the summer rain on 
the shingles. 

The child of to-day is sorely exercised and 
thinks much about her clothes. She knows that 
Santa Claus is a myth, that "Puss in Boots" is 
foolish and the fascinating ingenuity of "Swiss 
Family Robinson" quite impossible. Perhaps 
this is partly the reason why the attic, too, like 

73 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

all the rest of the modern house, has undergone 
a change which has added much to its convenience 
but has robbed it of the last vestige of sentiment. 
Still another old-fashioned attic belonged to 
a delightful farmhouse. It was floored and plas- 
tered, the space at the sides only being reserved 
for storage, quite enclosed and entered by small 
doors that fastened with a button. In this attic, 
which extended the entire length of the house, 
there were three big four-post beds, and a win- 
dow in either end which, left open on summer 
nights, gave full sweep to the west wind. The 
moonlight streamed in and lay, a silver patch 
across our beds, and the breeze brought the far- 
off barking of dogs from other farms, and the 
fragrance of sweetbrier, of new-mown hay and 
the clove pinks along the garden walks. We 
were always given a candle to undress by, and, 
to this day, the smell of a smoking candle wick 
brings back the memory of that pleasant place, 
although now 

**A11, all are gone, the old, familiar faces.'* 



74 



UP IN THE ATTIC 

Through the day in the spring and summer 
it resounded with the cheerful hum of the spin- 
ning-wheel, for here all such work was done, Ann 
and Martha walking to and fro, drawing out 
the long thread that wound itself on the fast- 
flying spindle, while Aunt Polly sat, her half- 
blind eyes shaded by the sunbonnet drawn down 
over her face, carding the snow-white fleeces. 

The attic of to-day is reached by a conventional 
staircase, quite as good as the best, forty years 
ago, furnished with a banister or safe hand-rail. 
It is liberally supplied with electricity, or gas 
jets, registers or radiators. There are several 
windows for light and perfect ventilation which 
are washed regularly and properly equipped 
with shades and sash curtains. There is a smooth 
floor for dancing, and even a stage for private 
theatricals or stereopticon lectures. Very little 
second-hand furniture is kept there because it 
has been either done over or sold to the second- 
hand dealer, or sent to the summer cottage. 
Whatever relics of clothing there may be are 
neatly arranged in drawers and wardrobes. 

75 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

Occasionally the best satin gowns, with laces and 
silken scarfs, are stored here in long cedar chests. 
Here little Rollo, who was put into spectacles at 
eight, declaims his speech for Arbor Day, and 
Julia practices reading the paper that she has 
written for the reunion of her "sorority" — hate- 
fullest of all words, except "smart" and "swag- 
ger." No fairy tales for them, or paper dolls, 
or watching wasps, or thrills at Tabby's fiery 
eyes, if you please. They have reached a loftier 
"viewpoint," "a higher plane," "along these 
lines," to quote again the phraseology of plati- 
tude. But it must be confessed — once more — 
that what the attic has lost in one direction it 
has gained in another, and the laundress — when 
there is one — is thankful for the clean, roomy 
place where the Monday washing can be dried 
on Monday, without postponement, regardless 
of the weather. 

Once in a while an attic is neglected and rub- 
bish accumulates distractingly. This is the attic 
of the overburdened, or procrastinating woman, 
who fully intends "to get at that attic one 

76 



UP IN THE ATTIC 

of these days," but never does. Sometimes 
she is only discouraged, and no wonder, if 
she has married a man who has the horrible 
habit of saving old newspapers — yellow, 
bulging bundles dating back to the debate on 
the Fugitive Slave law; others recording the stir- 
ring events of the Civil War, from Fort Sumter 
to Appomatox; illustrated journals, technical 
papers, all tied up with strips of list, or fuzzy 
hempen string. One of these days the procras- 
tinating woman may be of that company of wid- 
ows who immediately make bonfires of such col- 
lections when there is no longer a strong marital 
hand to restrain them. Then she will really 
clean up the attic, and the work of renovation, 
once begun, will be carried to its last resolution. 
She would never, of course, acknowledge it, 
but when the last Tribune of December 30, 1850, 
is reduced to ashes, she will have a chastened 
sensation of satisfaction, like Mrs. Belden in 
"The Breadwinner," who found a real consola- 
tion for bereavement in at last having all the 
hooks on both sides of the closet for her gowns. 

77 




IX 



Round About the Back Porch 



SOME new people had bought the 
fine old house next door. The 
sheds and rookeries in the rear 
had been torn away and a spa- 
cious porch had been built, instead, 
extending to the upper story, en- 
closed in a lattice. 

"Why are they doing that?" asked the won- 
dering neighbor. "Everybody knows that a 
back porch, especially a latticed back porch, is a 
perfect catch-all. The clothes-line and the bas- 
ket of clothes-pins and the washing machine are 



78 



THE BACK PORCH 

always left there. The baby's perambulator is 
wheeled across the door where you stumble 
over it in the dark. In the fall there will be 
crates of cucumbers and mangoes and tomatoes, 
and in the winter, buckets of coal." 

The view of the wondering neighbor was de- 
spondent, for, even as a repository for cucum- 
bers and mangoes and tomatoes the back porch is 
a great convenience, and doubly so if screened 
by a neat lattice. When vines are framed over 
it — the splendid Cobea scandens, pale moon- 
flowers, clematis, or even the many-hued morn- 
ing glory — it becomes a bower, a vernal retreat, 
where one hears but faintly the puffing automo- 
bile or the rattling trolley, and is not pained by 
the grocer's boy who drives by on the delivery 
wagon, lashing the sweating horse for a race with 
a rival while the mercury stands at 90 degrees in 
the shade. 

A distinguished woman whose husband was a 
famous litterateur and diplomat, often talked of 
her back porch and how much she enjoyed it, in 
the first serene days of her simple housekeeping. 

79 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

"I had my sewing-machine out there in the 
summer," she said, "and I remember an unex- 
pected visit we had from General H — on a 
heavenly September morning. Pie came quite 
unexpectedly — on horseback, for we had no rail- 
way connection with the outside world in those 
days. The breakfast table had been set on the 
back porch where we always ate during pleasant 
weather. I was baking waffles and he sat down 
and had coffee and %vaffles with us, and then we 
talked. How pleasant it was!" 

The humbler visitors, too, use the back porch 
— a very different class from those who arrive on 
foot, in carriages or motors, to be admitted by 
the front door, card-cases carried decorously in 
hand, on one's day ; or the doctor making his pro- 
fessional call when there is sickness in the house ; 
the clergyman paying a pastoral visit; the com- 
pany bidden to the wedding or some other high 
festivity, or, those who come silently and unasked 
■ — old friends and acquaintances — on that last 
occasion of all, when there is no brightening eye 
and no outstretched hand to welcome them. 



80 



THE BACK PORCH 

But, if all these prosperous folk know nothing 
of the back entrance, by way of the back porch, 
it has its own familiars — the red-faced butcher's 
boy who calls for his order ; the grocer's man on 
the same errand; the millanan with his crimson 
cheeks and his cap drawn down over his ears on 
frosty mornings, who tells you that "he never 
heard tell of formald'hyde." Then, too, the back 
porch has its touch of romance. Euphemia sits 
there star-gazing on the steps, the weather per- 
mitting, with the arm of her latest admirer 
around her waist. He tells her wondrous tales 
of personal prowess — how he got even with the 
boss; of the lucrative jobs he has had, or refused, 
or expects to get. 

Occasionally Euphemia sings. It may not be 
generally known, but there is a whole lyrical an- 
thology, familiar only to persons of her calling. 
Many of these songs are simply sentimental ; oth- 
ers are dismally tragic, as these verses, quoted as 
rendered, will show: 



81 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

"My tender parients brought me up 

Pervided fur me well, 
And in the city of Lexington 

They placed me in a mill. 
At last I saw a prett}'^ form, 

On her I cast my eye. 
And then I saw another one 

That suited me full well 
And Satan put it in my heart 

My first true love to kill. 

**I asked her fur to walk with me, — 

To walk a little ways — 
That her and me might both agree 

Upon a wedding-day. 
I took her by the lily-white hand 

And led her to the place, 
I took a rail out of the fence 

And stroke her in the face. 

"She fell upon her bended knee 

And did for mercy cry, 
*For Mercy's sake O, pity me, 

I'm not prepared to die. ' 
But little did I care for that, 

I only stroke her more 
Until I ended that sweet life, 

I never can restore. ' ' 

82 



THE BACK PORCH 

By far the larger part of Euphemia's reper- 
toire is equally gloomy, although occasionally 
she bursts forth with a cheery lilt like this : 

"On the banks of the Minnehaha, my love, 

On the banks of the Minnehaha, 
We will buy us a farm and together we will live 

On the banks of the Minnehaha. ' ' 

As in compositions of a higher order, poetic 
license grants wide latitude in these songs, dear 
to the heart of Euphemia, in matters of geog- 
raphy and other items which, after all, are not 
essential to the emotions or the imagination. 

In the leafy retirement of the back porch, the 
telephone cannot be heard; you cannot be called 
up while absorbed in some intricate bit of sewing, 
or a book which must be finished that day, to be 
asked if that is the Police Station or Smith's 
Foundry. 

The door-bell, too, rings faintly, so you miss 
the poor, much-to-be-pitied canvasser, who in 
very bad grammar tells you at once, and patron- 
izingly, that she is from Boston and is the agent 
for caustic soap and face-powder. 

83 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

You may ply the sewing-machine uninterrupt- 
edly, or finish your book in peace, for the repre- 
sentatives of trade, unwilling to curtail five min- 
utes of their protracted interchange of pleasantry 
with Euphemia, seek her boldly and pass by. 
Yes; there is much to be said in favor of a back 
porch — with a lattice — and the house which 
we have been building in imagination, for years, 
shall assuredly have one. 



84. 




Through the Hall to the 
Front Door 




N nearly all old English houses 
the hall furnishes evidence of fam- 
ily distinction. It is emblazoned 
with splendid coats of arms, with 
trophies of the chase, weapons and 
mediaeval armor, with works of art 
and settees of carved oak. In the houses of 
the well-to-do in our own professedly demo- 
cratic country, the hall may boast a good 
polished oak floor and fine rugs; but there 
are other unconsidered thousands who are con- 
tent if, with hard-wood floors and rugs, there 



85 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

is a table, a hat-rack and a hanging lamp 
of wrought iron. The main staircase, with 
a cathedral glass window at the landing, it is 
thought, affords sufficient diversity, particularly 
if there is an imposing newel post and an up- 
borne sheaf of electric lights. 

The hall is a fair index to the taste of its 
owner and the home-making instinct of his help- 
mate. I remember how painfully and conclusive- 
ly this was proved once in a search for habitable 
lodging in a western city. I had cut from the 
morning paper a long list of addresses, those of 
people in reduced circumstances who offered all 
the comforts of a home for a modest considera- 
tion, or received "paying guests" — a sinister 
term borrowed from England. What revela- 
tions followed that day's fruitless quest! Door 
after door was entered, some with bells whose 
slack wires Jangled like the broken strings of an 
aged piano ; others with a sort of twirling ratchet 
arrangement, or electric buttons that failed to 
respond, or that began ringing and would not 
leave off. In many places the doormat was 

86 



THROUGH THE HALL 

ragged to the last degree and clogged with lint 
and sand ; on another you could faintly discern a 
half -obliterated and highly satirical * 'Welcome" 
— in faded red. letters on a dun background. 
There were cobwebs around the transom and slits 
in the shades of the side lights and curtains that 
were ragged and hung askew. There was much 
difference in the agility of the maid, or landlady, 
who admitted one ; the door opening so promptly 
in some places as to suggest that the maid or 
matron in waiting had been resting on the stairs, 
rather discouraged that so few came, and ready 
to spring, panther-like, at the first tinkle; while 
others presented themselves at a leisurely pace, 
chewing, perhaps, as if they had been disturbed 
while taking a little refreshment. The door open, 
what a stale, dead atmosphere greeted one! so 
heavy, with so much "body," that it seemed re- 
markable it had not settled down, visible, over 
everything, like a "London Particular." It 
was the lingering effluvia of hundreds of "boiled 
dinners" in which the distinct odors of onions, 
cabbage and carrots could be immediately recog- 

87 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

nized. Through the Cimmerian gloom one had 
glimpses of a soiled and ragged carpet, a huge, 
grim chandelier, with stair rods displaced, or 
missing. As a comforting reminder that man is 
mortal, and that earthly suffering must finally 
have an end, I noted one cheerful wall decora- 
tion — the plat of a large, new cemetery that 
could be reached quickly and conveniently by 
the car line that passed the door. 

Now, whatever may be said, and though there 
are men and women who will find fault with 
Heaven, should they ever get there, the average 
lodger does not ask the impossible. So many 
boarding houses now accommodate — or profess 
to accommodate — business women, and this 
class patronize laundries — unless they are send- 
ing home money to their families on a salary of 
ten dollars a week. They do not invade the 
kitchen to "rub out handkerchiefs," or "press 
out two or three collars"; they hire all this done, 
glad that they have not to do it themselves. Such 
women are more than grateful for common com- 
fort, which by the way is most uncommon, and 

88 



THROUGH THE HALL 

they count just plain, unpretentious cleanness 
a luxury. 

When such an applicant for room and board 
finds a front hall which has been well swept, or 
the floor of which has been brightly polished; 
where pure air circulates freely and there is a 
reasonable amount of light, she looks no further ; 
she knows, instinctively, that the rooms above 
and below stairs, however simply they may be 
furnished, will give satisfaction. The mattress 
will not suggest a collection of wire rat-traps, 
and she will not be forced to invest in hammer 
and nails to patch up things that are falling in 
pieces, or buy cheap stuff for drapery to hide 
splotches of shoe polish or kerosene on the wall 
paper. 

The well ordered hall, which may be plain as 
it can be, gives cheerful assurance of tidiness and 
comfort which can usually be relied upon. 

I remember, once, taking lodgings in London 
upon the sole and unsupported testimony of the 
"wax-cloth" in the "passage" — the brightest 
blue and brown, upon which not a speck of dust 

89 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

could be seen — even in that sooty town ! They 
were the only English lodgings I ever occupied 
where the vegetables were cooked done; where 
the aromatic mint leaf was left out of the green 
peas, and where the entrees might have been the 
handiwork of a French chef. 

I spent months there, and left only because 
the husband of the landlady — a gentleman of 
extremest leisure — had a trying habit of pound- 
ing the table with his first and bawling at "Scott," 
the maid, who was always, consequently, in a 
state of abject terror. But he had not wiped up 
that immaculate wax-cloth and had no place in 
the logical sequence of the good housekeeping 
for which his garrulous little wife alone deserved 
the credit. The deduction still remains unas- 
sailable; the polished brass knocker and door- 
knob were as bright and cheerful as the shining 
sun, as was the whole house — when the master 
was away. 

It is not surprising that, from a conscientious 
apprenticeship. Sir Joseph Porter, K. C. B., rose 
to be "the ruler of the Queen's navee." It was 

90 



THROUGH THE HALL 

the merited promotion of one who had not 
shirked, but who, in youth, had, to the best of his 
abihty "pohshed up the handle of the big front 
door." 

He deserved well of his country, and it was 
the most natural thing in the world that he should 
have been idolized by "his sisters and his cousins 
and his aunts." 



91 




The Dining -Room 

N most houses the dining-room is 
set apart for one function only, 
the serving and eating of meals. 
Among persons of moderate 
means one corner is frequently oc- 
cupied by the sewing-machine, 
while the long table, when it is not required for 
its specific use, is utilized for "cutting out." 
Scraps are scattered about which Euphemia picks 
up unwillingly. For a brief season — while the 
fall and spring sewing are going on — such a 
dining-room is not comfortable. 




92 



THE DINING-ROOM 

In many prosperous, middle-class houses in 
England the dining-room is the common sitting 
room. In the morning, at least, the table is 
covered with a cloth of serviceable woollen ma- 
terial, of some warm, dark shade; the prints on 
the wall are always good. In cold — not cool — 
weather a clear fire burns in the shining grate 
which is scrupulously black-leaded every morn- 
ing — such is the subjection of English house- 
maids, even yet — and there is a high, bright 
brass fender, with a fender-stool, worked in old- 
fashioned cross-stitch. The sideboard is loaded 
with glass and plate — the latter authentically 
hall-marked — and at a nice little desk near the 
window the mistress, with characteristic prompt- 
ness and courtesy, answers the notes that have 
come by morning post, and goes over her house- 
keeping accounts. There is space for a sofa, and 
here the boys lounge — seldom the girls — read- 
ing novels. The cherished cats and dogs have 
the run of the house, including the dining-room, 
even at meal time, and while they are sometimes 



93 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

well-behaved, at others they take liberties that 
shock our sense of propriety. 

With us, however, no one sits in the dining- 
room. There seems to be an unwritten law that 
it must be left to itself, except at meal-time, 
and during the few minutes of gossip when the 
family think they may loiter at table. At most, 
the children spread out their atlases and diction- 
aries under the convenient light, after dinner, or 
write their essays and exercises there, undis- 
turbed. 

And yet, much time and thought are often 
given to beautifying the dining-room, to the 
selection and arrangement of all its belongings; 
to the plate-shelf, with its array of jugs and plat- 
ters, the chairs, sideboard, table and rugs. 

There has been a reaction against pictures 
of dead game and fish, and peaches and straw- 
berries spilling out of overturned baskets. Ap- 
parently these have been consigned to oblivion, 
with spinning-wheels and decorated snow-shovels. 
The impression is spreading that pictures on 
the dining-room walls may be, without offense, 

94 



T HE DINING-ROOM 

just as good as those elsewhere in the house. 

Sydney Smith loved books, not only for their 
contents, but because they ^'furnished a room." 
In the days of his comparative obscurity he 
longed for a room, the walls of which should be 
lined with books in bright bindings. In his lonely 
and remote Yorkshire parish, where the coaches 
of his titled visitors mired in the mud in front of 
the drawing-room windows, his wish was grati- 
fied. With the coming of more prosperous 
times, he was able to have the books and they 
were all collected upon shelves, not in a library, 
but in the dining-room, where he surveyed 
them with satisfaction at least three times daily. 
They were compensation for mud and lack of 
near neighbors. 

Whether used as a sitting-room or not, there 
should be, if possible, an abundance of sunshine 
— cheerfulness, in any event. Most of us are dis- 
posed to begin the day in a state of querulous ir- 
ritability more or less suppressed, according to 
our theories of politeness. Why this is true, no 
one has ever explained. But it must be sadly 

95 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

admitted that there are comparatively few who 
are as good-tempered at breakfast, no matter 
how trying may have been the labors of the day, 
as they are over the mid-day luncheon or the 
after-dinner coffee. Sleep should refresh one, 
though to be sure all do not sleep, and to these, 
morning brings only lassitude and weariness. 
Such sufferers must be pitied and forgiven, if 
nothing suits them, though they are enjoined not 
to inflict their morning megrims upon their in- 
nocent and unoffending brothers and sisters. 

Because so many of us do come to breakfast 
soddenly and heavily, it should be above all 
others, an appetizing meal, — the coffee clear 
and fragrant, the eggs flawless, with the toast 
brown, crisp and tender, with fruits and mel- 
ons in their season, and flowers fresh as dew. 
In the country all these things are obtainable, 
most of them being home products; and in the 
city, with overstocked markets, luxuries often 
come within the reach of people of very moderate 
means. 

One of the most delightful dining-rooms I 

96 



THE DINING-ROOM 

have ever seen was that of a friend in one of the 
enchanting hamlets of the Hawaiian Islands. It 
was separated from the parlor only by an arch- 
way with an inconspicuous grille, with narrow 
open spaces on either side of the archway, in 
which were placed fine foliage plants that were 
of a most thrifty and luxuriant growth. The 
floor was covered with soft, white Japanese mat- 
ting. I cannot recall a single detail of the fur- 
nishings — everything about that house was in 
exquisite taste, for all its simplicity. But I recall 
even yet, with delight, the deep, recessed window 
with its broad, cushioned window-seat. Just out- 
side was a strip of ground set thick with nastur- 
tiums of many shades, and at the edge of the 
flower-plot a perpendicular cliff fell sheer to the 
sea. 

From that wonderful window-seat the great 
Pacific Ocean, blue as sapphire, or grey as a 
cloud, reflecting the tropical sky above it, 
stretched to the horizon and on and on, the waste 
of water unbroken by a single island, to the coast 
of South America. 



97 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

Sails shone in the offing, and occasionally 
a great man-of-war dropped anchor in the har- 
bor, and far away, ethereal as a dream, rose the 
snow-capped peak of Mauna Kea. To the north 
were groves of dark-foliaged palms and 
mangoes of exquisite grace, their broad leaves 
swaying slowly and fitfully in the trade 
wind. I thought at first, "This is beautiful — 
now, that it is summer, but what will it be when 
winter comes?" Then I remembered that tliere 
is no winter in those Fortunate Isles. Some 
days there were storms; then the surf rolled in 
and tossed its spray against the cliff with a re- 
sounding roar, and the trade wind answered with 
its deep, strong cadence. 

But even Mahomet could not bring the moun- 
tain to himself, chosen of Allah though he was; 
and such a seascape, with its tropical setting, it 
is not given many to study and enjoy while doing 
justice to substantial creature comforts. The 
point is, however, that my friends might ha\^e 
selected another part of the house for their din- 
ing-room — one to the rear, or overlooking the 

98 



THE DINING-ROOM 

road; but they did not, and I have always 
thought that their close companionship with the 
great and mysterious ocean must have had a 
very real influence in their daily lives. For 
without laboring to be cultured they were people 
given to high thinking, of sweet, tranquil dignity 
and natural gentleness of speech and manners. 

Another wonderful dining-room was in Lon- 
don, superbly adorned with costly Delft — 
hearth, mantel and wainscoting; with chairs, ta- 
ble and sideboard of some lustrous wood which I 
did not know. The napery on great occasions was 
a marvel of antique needlework. The dull Lon- 
don street was shut out by windows of stained 
glass that filled the room with a softened, opales- 
cent light. Much of the talk of that splendid 
table was of London, and reminded one of Henry 
James's declaration — "Nowhere else is there 
such fulness of life." 

The main features of that luxurious dining- 
room may be out of the reach of most people — 
the Delft, the antique needlework, and the host 

99 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and guests, who had drawn from the resources 
of the whole world their power to entertain. 

But it is possible for the humblest of us to 
take into the dining-room a cheerful countenance, 
pleasant and gracious speech, a ready willing- 
ness to bear with dulness, and to make no sign if 
the fare is disappointing and unpalatable. Such 
evils should not exist in an enlightened society, 
in the houses of the intelligent. But they do ex- 
ist, in dire crises, for there are failures every- 
where against which human ingenuity is power- 
less to contend. 

It is of benefit to reflect, then, that while bad 
coffee is unpalatable it is not really harmful, and 
tough beefsteak and heavy bread may be eaten 
occasionally — not habitually — with no lasting 
bad results. It is certain that a poor breakfast, 
even after a restless night, is not a sufficient cause 
for surly complaint, or for the bad temper that 
affects the digestion and makes others feel sad 
and unhappy for the rest of the day. 

A smooth, spotless cloth, shining china laid 
with precision, a sharp carving knife and steel 

100 



THE DINING-ROOM 

ready at hand, a cheerful, clean, well-ventilated 
dining-room, are a good beginning for the day's 
work, and if the meal is wholesome, however 
plain, and the conversation agreeable, those who 
are thus fortified go forth to meet their responsi- 
bilities with augmented courage. 

It has become a fad with many to eat no break- 
fast — an abuse against which the body, which 
requires sufficient and regular nourishment, must 
finally rebel. It is not only the simple nutritious 
fare that cannot be foregone, but the pleasant 
talk, the advice, the encouragement, the sugges- 
tion which the aroma of coffee seems to inspire. 

Three pauses daily, in the rush of work, three 
reunions daily around the table within the en- 
compassing walls of the dining-room, are not 
too many. 

It would be a blessed thing if it were possible 
for all — for the boys and girls who carry their 
luncheons to school, for the husbands and 
fathers who hurry to the restaurant and then 
hurry away again, inviting wretched invalidism 
and criminally shortening their lives — to return 

101 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

instead for their mid-day meal to the restful quiet 
and better fare of the home. 

The spread of rapid transit in every direction 
brings the school and the down-town office into 
closer and closer proximity to the family dining- 
room, and it is a factor in health and happiness 
not to be underestimated. 



109 




XII 

Table Talk 

TALK at table demands very 
serious consideration. It has ac- 
quired a meaning of its own and 
brings to mind men and women 
of affairs — Macaulay and the ar- 
bitrary Lady Holland, Sydney 
Smith, the poet Rogers and his 
breakfasts, Lord Houghton and Longfellow, in 
once classic Cambridge — all denizens of the high 
world, gifted, brilliant and witty, with a wide 
knowledge of art, literature and science, and of 
strange, interesting countries. Out of the fulness 
of such knowledge and mental equipment their 



103 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

talk could not be other than delightful, and for 
their proficiency in a difficult accomplishment 
they have been immortalized in history, and their 
utterances live after them. 

But it is not of such table talk as theirs that 
this brief commentary has to deal. It is, rather, 
with the ordinary conversation of every-day talk 
on the practical things of every-day life, which 
already has been casually touched upon. 

But it will bear further discussion. Some of 
us have an involuntary superstition as to the 
sort of a beginning we make of the day, and we 
are almost persuaded that there is sl visible tide 
of circumstance that sets in with the morning 
and does not turn until the sun has gone down. 

A number of homely proverbs — the survival 
of generations of folk-lore — deal with right 
and wrong beginnings, and warn one to make, 
if possible, a propitious start in whatever task or 
pleasure one may have essayed. As has been re- 
marked, good-tempered, interesting talk, and 
a firm determination to regard indifferent cook- 
ery with tolerant patience, when it is not persist- 

104 



TABLE TALK 

ent, makes a most propitious beginning of the 
day's work. With self-control and amiability the 
selection of suitable subjects for talk at table, 
particularly the breakfast table, where they do 
not present themselves spontaneously, should 
steadfastly be borne in mind. 

There is one topic that should be eternally 
tabooed and that is — disease and painful ac- 
cidents. Upon this point Emerson has written 
with authority. He warns us of the unwisdom 
of making even the most formal inquiry as to 
our neighbors' health lest it set in motion a flood 
of particulars impossible to check. He lays 
such stress upon the avoidance of disease as a 
theme for talk that one almost hesitates to ask: 
"How do you do?" 

Christian Scientists, however much of their 
theories we may reject, especially that of "mali- 
cious animal magnetism," hold one vital princi- 
ple, that to dwell upon disease mentally is to 
invite it. It is not an invention or discovery 
of that cult, since such a belief has existed for 
ages, and it is a well-known physiological fact 

105 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

that thinking of it seriously retards and impairs 
the function of digestion. 

And yet, what a common topic is sickness and 
accident as table talk, amongst those who in all 
other respects are charmingly polite. Who has 
not been forced to sit at table with intelligent 
people and listen, powerless to change the sub- 
ject, to interminable discourse upon tonics, pills 
and plasters. 

Even worse are the descriptions of symptoms 
and "attacks," and minute accounts of horrible 
catastrophes that make the flesh creep. One of 
these days we shall come to look upon all such 
discussions at table as another evidence of de- 
fective civilization, far more reprehensible than 
the misuse of the knife in the past. 

There is no end of pleasant things to talk 
about, so the inherently unpleasant should be 
rigorously barred — sickness above all, hard luck 
and misfortune — all the disagreeables that it is 
the fine flower of courtesy to bear in silence, or 
to mention as seldom as possible, and never at 
table. 



106 



TABLE TALK 

The interesting and amusing happenings that 
have brightened the days; the new book that is 
being read ; the plans that are being arranged for 
some important event; the permissible gossip of 
church, society or club — all these afford material 
for talk that goes well with the morning omelette 
or the dessert that ends the dinner. The short- 
comings of servants, the stupidity of Euphe- 
mia, the impertinence of the seamstress, their 
waste and mischievous blundering, also belong 
to the list of domestic "dont's" — no matter how 
painful and palpable may be the evidence of their 
sins, set forth in plain view. And while the mis- 
tress endeavors to meet her trials with a calm, un- 
ruffled front, the master should strive to excel in 
well-doing of the same sort, keeping to himself 
the vexations he has endured, and leaving to the 
tete-a-tete any objections to domestic matters 
he may be disposed to offer, and such exhorta- 
tions to economy as he may consider are urgently 
needed. 

Another species of tiresome talk, which re- 
minds one of those examples in the old grammars 

107 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

headed "errors to be avoided," is that which 
abounds in dogmatic statements meant to be stol- 
idly and laboriously improving, which are 
hurled at one's head like so many bricks. Argu- 
ment, at table, has no justification at all. It is, 
usually like the great matter which a small fire 
kindles. It begins with some apparently unim- 
portant remark which is questioned or contra- 
dicted; the debate on either side becomes more 
and more heated and noisy, each faction gaining 
supporters until presently the entire family is in- 
volved in it. It is doubtful if argument under 
the most favorable conditions has ever accom- 
plished so very much, after all. People make up 
their minds of their own accord, each for himself, 
the conclusions which they reach being worked 
out from a mass of pros and cons. Juries may 
be swayed by it, but not until they have been 
forced to listen to the testimony of many wit- 
nesses, cross-examination and rebuttal ; and even 
after all this they disagree, very often, the few 
"hanging out," testimony and debate both having 
been lost upon them. If, then, professional de- 



108 



TABLE TALK 

bate, highly technical and thoroughly searching, 
can prove so futile where vast interests are in- 
volved, how much more futile is it when there is a 
mere personal point of view to be sustained, that 
will benefit nobody, when all is said and done, 
and which serves only to spoil an otherwise en- 
joyable meal. 

As bad as stubborn and excited argument, is 
the habit of reading the newspaper aloud. There 
mav be some excuse for the husband and father 
who will have little leisure during a busy day 
if he props up the paper and scans the headlines 
as he eats his toast and drinks his coffee; but it 
is not a habit conducive either to health or to 
the genial companionship that should refine the 
business of eating to something more than mere- 
ly satisfying the wants of the body. But far, far 
worse is the odious habit of reading aloud stories 
of railroad wrecks, dull leaders and stupid and 
witless attempts at humor. This is invariably 
done by the most inexpert reader in the family 
— the young man who stumbles and blunders 

109 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

over the hard words, or the young woman who 
has never been taught "to mind her pauses." 

Only that which interests and entertains all, 
young and old, comes within the scope of perfect 
table talk, and reading aloud is no substitute for 
conversation. The custom was once ordained, and 
still is in force, in monasteries and convents — 
during the brief time spent over the coarse 
fare in the refectory, where conversation at meals 
is prohibited. Then the "Lives of the Saints," 
or excerpts from church history may be welcome, 
furnishing food for reflection. But the rule that 
applies to the monastery is not applicable in the 
family or to the morning paper. 



no 




XIII 

Where the Books Are 

SYDNEY SMITH was right 
when he said that books furnished 
a room and, as has been related, it 
is pleasant to remember that he 
lived to enjoy such a room — whole 
shelves filled with beautiful bind- 
ings in which he took a never ending delight. 

The requisites of a perfect library are plenty 
of space and light. In these records of domestic 
facts and possibilities I have dwelt much upon 
the importance of light. The iteration and re- 
iteration may have grown tiresome, but, like 

111 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

Martin Luther, "I can no other." There are 
certain awful ailments to which light is inimical, 
but to the normal human being it is the source 
of health and happiness. Nowadays, when there 
is such a frantic searching of encyclopedias and 
maps — the children "looking up" the endless 
data they are required to "stand and deliver" 
with their daily lessons, and the club member 
"reading up" for the paper she must prepare — 
a good light and a large table are highly de- 
sirable. 

The library, or book-room — which is all that 
most places can rightfully be called in private 
houses where the books are kept — should be a 
practical workshop, well supplied with paper, 
pens, pencils, ink and blotting paper — the last 
mentioned not to be forgotten. If in cool 
weather an open wood fire is possible, the last 
touch of luxury has been achieved. 

If the shelves are high, movable folding steps 
should be at hand, and it is necessary for the 
proper care of books that all bookcases be sup- 
plied with glass doors even at the sacrifice of 

112 



WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 

artistic effect. Curtains, no matter how orna- 
mental, are not enough, and are certainly no im- 
provement over glazed doors from an aesthetic 
standpoint. 

The present method of heating houses, though 
a vast gain in cleanliness, dries the air, and in 
spite of all correctives is destruction to books. 
The paper and bindings that have been pre- 
served through long years of stoves and grates 
go to pieces, drop into fragments or are reduced 
to impalpable powder by the dry heat of the 
steam radiator. 

Books should be taken from their places and 
carefully dusted at regular intervals, and an old 
booklover of my acquaintance is in the habit of 
reversing choice volumes on the shelves — large, 
heavy volumes — to relieve the strain of one posi- 
tion, which he considers injurious. 

There are few people who really know how to 
care for books as they should be cared for, and 
this is very largely because they have never been 
taught. Our public libraries are monuments to 
our national abuse of books. Within a short 



113 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

time the books become grimy from the unwashed 
hands through which they have passed, and the 
leaves are dog's-eared or defaced with annota- 
tions the reverse of those with which Coleridge 
is said to have enriched every book that came 
into his possession. The marginal comments of 
the average reader are nearly always pointless, 
flat, and stupid. Occasionally a reader of the old 
school attempts to correct the slipshod English 
of the latest popular author, substituting a gram- 
matical "which" for a misused "who," correcting 
the steadily increasing split infinitives and re- 
storing a dislocated "only" to its rightful place. 
But it is a hopeless task, whatever be its crying 
need, and there would hardly be space on the 
margins of many popular books for corrections 
urgently demanded in the interests of pure 
English. 

When I come upon the pencillings of the or- 
dinary kind — usually exclamations, running 
largely to adjectives — I have a sensation as if 
some one were reading over my shoulder in a 
husky voice and breathing on the back of my 

114 



WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 

neck. Such notes are salutary, occasionally, as 
a corrective to intellectual conceit, for they re- 
veal to the unconscious author who imagines that 
he has mastered the mother tongue how little he 
has been able to convey his real meaning to what 
is now known as the reading public. I remember 
finding in a copy of Walter Balestier's "Benefits 
Forgot," obtained from Mudie's in London — 
which is not patronized by the uncultured masses 
— an annotation that will serve as an illustration. 

The story, as will be recalled, is a remarkable 
narrative of moral conflict and development. 
Some one had scrawled upon a fly leaf: **A Very 
Silly Book." 

This was not the slightest reflection upon the 
skill and genius of the author ; it was the scribbler 
who stood, self-confessed, a dolt and a clod. 

A great deal of the tendency to maltreatment 
of books by the rising generation might be cor- 
rected at school, although it would be adding to 
the burdens of teachers, already sufficiently heavy 
and constantly increasing, and shifting to their 
shoulders duties that should be performed by 

115 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

parents at home. Not long ago I visited a model 
school in a Western city, and a boy — a fine well- 
dressed, well-behaved lad, — handed me his spell- 
ing-book. It was so dirty that I was glad that 
I had not removed my gloves. The book was 
chewed and warped, scrawled with rude carica- 
tures and a confusion of pencil marks that made 
the print almost indecipherable. It was the lad's 
private property. Perhaps where text-books are 
supplied by school boards such wanton abuse 
would not have been permitted. But it should 
not have been permitted, though the book was 
the boy's own. There was something positively 
brutal in the treatment it had received, and I 
observed that it called from the teacher, who had 
apparently not discovered it before, only the 
mildest "Dear me!" 

I do not wonder that there is now an accepted 
theory that contagious disease may be spread by 
books taken from the free circulating libraries. 
If their soiled pages are not the lairs of all man- 
ner of malignant bacilli, where, then, shall the 
creatures be found? 



116 



WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 

The conscienceless borrower is another enemy 
of the well ordered library — the person who 
never returns a book, or who keeps it month after 
month and is then indignant when the owner calls 
to get it; who props up the window, or the leg 
of an unsteady table with it, and uses the scissors 
for a book mark. 

*'I am so sorry," said a woman who always 
boasted of a reverential love of books, "but little 
Alfred got hold of your 'Omar Khayyam' when 
I left him for a moment. He is simply wild 
about pictures. I didn't know that he was eating 
a cream puff at the time, and I could have cried 
when I saw what he had done." 

And so could the owner when she saw what he 
had done. 

Unless one wants his library to vanish, volume 
by volume, it is necessary to keep a strict account 
of all books as they are loaned and returned. 
The borrower who never returns a book, or brings 
it back so soiled and maltreated that it is fit only 
for the furnace or the old-rags-and-paper man, 
should be ruthlessly blacklisted, and no further 



117 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

favors should be granted. If this rule is hard to 
enforce, then books that tempt the ruthless bor- 
rower should be kept out of sight and never 
spoken of. Nothing should be left lying about 
but things like "Young's Night Thoughts," and 
"the best selling novel." 

There is a real pleasure in sharing one's books 
with friends who enJoy them, and who, because 
they truly love them, handle them as delicately 
as you do yourself ; who will not lend them again 
without permission, who will not surrender them 
to little Alfred, whatever may be his budding 
taste for art. To such friends one's shelves should 
always be free, and to no other. 

While reading or study is in progress, silence 
in the librarj^ is, of course, an imperative neces- 
sity. There are fortunate ones who can forget 
themselves in a beguiling volume to such an ex- 
tent that conversation may rage, an army might 
almost deploy around them and they would be 
blissfully unconscious of it. I recall one such en- 
viable person who used to sit buried in Froude's 
"Queen Elizabeth," wholly unaware that her 

118 



WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 

brother across the table was executing the most 
florid compositions on the flute. But concentra- 
tion like that is a gift from Heaven. 

Many readers — real readers — have sensitive 
nerves with an acute sense of hearing, and it is 
difficult to fasten the mind upon the printed page, 
when disturbed by shuffling and ffdgetting, or, 
worse still, by teasing, sibilant whispering. 

When not occupied by readers for a legitimate 
object, the library is likely to be a favorite con- 
gregating place. Somehow, family councils here 
take on an air of dignity and importance, and the 
very presence of the books seems to inspire one 
to good talk in which every one takes some part. 
Here the best stories are told, adventures related, 
the summer outing is planned, the European 
tour, the journey to interesting places in our own 
country. The various routes are followed on the 
convenient maps, and what has been said of fam- 
ous places by famous people may be looked up 
on the instant. 

The furnishing and decorating of the library 
deserves even more careful study than is given 

119 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

the drawing-room or dining-room. A clear north 
light is always desirable, but perhaps not more 
so than a south window that admits the sunshine 
all winter, which may be subdued, if so desired, 
by proper shades and drapery. There is no more 
certain evidence of the practical use to which a 
library is put than is shown in the manner of its 
lighting. Some estimable people once bought a 
splendid house which had been built by a man 
of taste and culture. When the purchasers 
moved into it they proceeded to rearrange it ac- 
cording to their own ideas. An ugly view in the 
dining-room had been hidden by a superb stained 
glass window which did not darken the room in- 
conveniently for the use for which it had been 
planned. The newcomers, who cared a good deal 
more for showy bindings than for the contents 
of any books whatsoever, very promptly selected 
the dining-room for their library, because they 
never wished to read, nor were their intimate 
friends ever disposed to use it for that purpose. 
They had no need of light, and the stained glass 
window, consequently, was no drawback. 

120 



WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 

The decorative ideas of amateurs sometimes 
run to portraits of poets and historians, done in 
distemper on the ceihng, which only the keenly 
observant can identify. 

"How would you like a nice frieze, ma'am, of 
books, as if they was a standin' on a shelf — some 
of 'em fallin' down?" asked an aspiring kalso- 
miner of his patron — a woman, whose beautiful 
new study was the pride of her heart. 

Warmth of color, simple, tasteful furniture, a 
noiseless clock with a dial upon which the numer- 
als can be read across the room, lamps with soft- 
ly-tinted, clear shades — these come next in im- 
portance to the equipment of the shelves. Given 
the necessary taste, all this may be had by people 
of moderate means; and it is impossible to 
others who have the wherewithal to gratify the 
most extravagant fancies, and little else. 

The library, in daily and constant use, should 
be the pleasantest room in the whole house. 



121 




The Evolution of the Parlor 




HOSE of us who have the cour- 
age to confess that we still delight 
in Dickens, in the face of recent 
realistic fiction, recall that in his 
stories the parlor was a snug re- 
treat behind the shop where the 
family partook of tea, shrimps and buttered 
toast ; or into which the genial innkeeper invited 
travellers toward whom he was especially well 
disposed. 

The drawing-room was the state apartment in 
the great house, and I recall how I was charmed, 



m 



THE PARLOR 

as a child, by an enchanting picture of the draw- 
ing-room at "Chesney Wold," in a beautiful 
Enghsh edition of "Bleak House." 

In our country, "drawing-room" is the term 
which has always been most in favor in the South, 
while in the West and in New England we cling 
to the "parlor" of our shop-keeping forebears, 
although we have ceased to spell it with a "u." 

The New England parlor has a distinct place 
in American fiction: from Hawthorne to How- 
ells, it has been presented as a room where grim, 
stiff furniture kirks amid darkness seldom broken 
in the Arctic cold of the long winter, or in a 
summer atmosphere that is redolent of mould 
and potpourri. 

We are also told that the sacred solitude is 
seldom disturbed, except when the minister calls, 
at the regular spring and fall cleanings, wed- 
dings, funerals and Thanksgiving. 

When the darling "Lady of the Aroostook" 
had been married and came back to her native 
village, the occasion was deemed of sufficient im- 
portance to be celebrated by a frosty little gath- 

123 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ering of neighbors in the parlor. A fire was 
hghted in the air-tight stove, where wood and 
kindhng were laid ready for such emergencies; 
cake and coffee were served, imparting to the oc- 
casion, as the delightful chronicler informs us, an 
almost sinful sense of dissipation. 

That was years ago — in the days when real 
novels were written — before the era of problem 
plays or vitiated fiction. There has been a won- 
derful liberalizing influence at work upon the 
New England parlor, as with most of New Eng- 
land's inherited customs and traditions. 

In regard to the relinquishment of many of 
the old convictions, strange cults have sprung up ; 
spiritualsim first, then theosophy; Christian Sci- 
ence, with all its offshoots, ramifications and 
* 'malicious animal magnetism" — and lastly a 
still newer revelation based upon what are called 
"vibrations" — intelligible only to a small, eso- 
teric circle. There will be, one of these days, pos- 
sibly a reaction and a return to at least a modified 
form of the old beliefs. 

During the last decade the hand of change has 

124 



THE PARLOR 

been laid upon the tightly closed shutters of the 
New England parlor, owing to the persistent 
efforts of the present and more liberal generation. 
First, a few dim rays of light were admitted — 
enough to reveal the haircloth sofa with some dis- 
tinctness, the tidies, the daguerreotypes opened 
at the same angle in an even row on the mantel; 
the family Bible and the big lamp on the centre 
table; the hair wreath in its frame on the wall. 
When it was found that the light did no serious 
damage, the blinds were turned a little more; 
and of late they have been flung wide, and in 
many localities the parlor has lost its sanctity. 

In a thriving hamlet in Connecticut I saw but 
one house where a well-beaten track led to the 
back door, and where the unbroken sward from 
the gate to the front step proclaimed the fact 
that the front entrance was "for looks" only, and 
not for general use. 

The furniture, in this evolution of the parlor, 
has been led a lively chase. In families where the 
daughters went away to school, or paid long visits 
to progressive friends in Boston or New York, 

195 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

they came home — this was in the early TO's — 
with a firm determination to remove the old heir- 
looms to the attic. And they did it. 

The first stages of this reform filled the spaces 
thus left vacant with chairs and divans of black 
walnut upholstered in green reps that faded — 
oh, how it faded! With the green reps were 
curtains of Nottingham lace, vases for the man- 
tel and an onvx clock, and there was a ruthless 
sweeping away of the old daguerreotypes. About 
that time, too, the chromo lithograph was in- 
vented and popularized, and first came Whit- 
tier's "Barefoot Boy," and "Wide Awake and 
Fast Asleep." 

It is not to be supposed that modern improve- 
ments stopped here. Through the medium of art 
journals, Kensington designs became known; 
then followed Eastlake furniture. This, also, has 
had its day and ceased to be, and we have settled 
down into a tolerant acceptance of whatever is 
good, insisting only upon a reasonable degree of 
harmony, and demanding that Japanese and old 



THE PARLOR 

English shall not be placed in too close proxim- 
ity, lest they clash. 

There are still some doughty souls who have 
not been intimidated by the hue and cry after 
microbes. They still cling desperately to their 
carpets fastened down with tacks. But the 
change to rugs and polished floors which I ap- 
pear to have emphasized with perhaps tiresome 
iteration, is an incalculable improvement, and it 
is an object to which the truly public-spirited 
may devote their energies with profit to the coun- 
try at large, in order that the fashion may be 
universally adopted and remain. 

The Swiss rocker still lingers furtively in a 
few dark corners, where it betrays itself, like an 
ill-tempered dog, by the jangle of its internal 
machinery and a vicious propensity to nip the 
carelessly suspended hand of the absent-minded 
person who seats himself in it. There are now — 
worse luck — really shocking tables, with drop- 
sical bulges and carving suggestive of the plan- 
ing mill, sofas that recall Procrustes and cabinets 
that make one gasp ; but there are also charming 

127 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and really good things that may be had, by those 
capable of choosing them, at a moderate cost. 

We have never followed the English custom, 
fortunately, of so crowding the drawing-room 
that it is difficult to move about without stum- 
bling over ottomans or running against tables 
overloaded with fragile bric-a-brac. With all the 
changes, there are still few houses where the 
drawing-room is commonly used, though in these 
days of informality and thorough heating, there 
is no reason why it should not be. Tradition still 
unconsciously tempers custom. It is in some 
more favored haunt, which is often given some 
peculiar, local nam^e by the family, that the 
genius of intimate hospitality holds sway, and 
that the most familiar altar has been reared 
to our Lares and Penates. Callers who are not 
on terms of intimacy ; the distinguished stranger ; 
the committee; the gentleman who presents a 
letter of introduction — these and their like are 
received in the drawing-room, as they always 
have been and always will be. But though the 
window shades, nowadays, are always raised, the 

128 



THE PARLOR 

sun shines in and the doors stand invitingly open, 
the drawing-room, with all its splendor, is de- 
serted, except on solemn and formal occasions. 

Why? There seems to be no good reason ex- 
cept that which I have given — its old-time ex- 
clusiveness still repels familiarity. 

There is another — all rooms, in large houses, 
at least, have specific uses and each its own spe- 
cial attraction. The piano is in the music room, 
the books in the library, and it has been learned 
— none too soon — that it is unhygienic for two 
persons to occupy the same bedchamber, so that 
each member of the household gathered in the 
family congregating place, wherever it may be, 
is disposed frequently to slip away to write a 
note undisturbed at his or her own desk; to 
snatch a moment on the lounge, or meditate 
awhile behind the closed door. This leaves the 
drawing-room deserted, in sohtary grandeur. 

Not so very long ago I attended a funeral in 
a stately Kentucky mansion. The family had 
been one of position and importance for some six 
generations, and it had held the original freehold, 

129 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

bought from the government, for more than a 
century. The house was big and empty, and many 
of the rooms, being disused, had at the last re- 
verted to two aged, unmarried women. The 
younger of the two, who was past seventy, died 
first; then, five years later, the elder. She was 
ninety-three, still stately and distinguished in 
manner and appearance, but she had long out- 
lived her generation. 

The funeral was held in bitter winter weather ; 
fires were lighted in the great drawing-room upon 
whose hearths no blaze had shone for nearly four 
decades; the rose-brocade-covered furniture was 
still shrouded in the Hollands covering that had 
enveloped it for years, the keys of the old piano 
were yellow as saffron, and the carpet, a thing 
of luxury at the beginning, was dimmed and 
blackened from the dust and soot of more than 
fifty years. For that drawing-room there had 
never been any evolution except in the direction 
of a gradual return to its elements. 

It is now common to substitute in plainer 
houses a large living room for the less demo- 

130 



THE PARLOR 

cratic drawing-room. Its chief purpose is utility, 
but with it beauty is often cunningly com- 
bined and a great degree of comfort. The table 
in the centre is covered with books and prints; 
there are cushioned window seats, a fireplace, 
good pictures and a great variety of chairs and 
lounges, and the whole effect, as one crosses the 
threshold, is of refinement and good cheer. 
But a living room of this sort is practicable 
only in small families, especially where there are 
no young children. For, to enjoy play as they 
should, children must and will scatter their toys 
about, and harness the chairs together, resenting 
any disturbance of their arrangements. 

As between the deserted drawing-room and a 
living room which the family really use and en- 
joy, it will not be hard to choose. A few dints 
on the table legs, or an occasional splash of ink 
on the rug, is not too high a price to pay for a 
living room meant really to be lived in. 



131 




The Secrets of the Spare Room 

y^OSPITALITY prompts one to 
give of his best to the stranger 
within his gates. Bearing this in 
mind, the spare room should be a 
pleasant abode, fresh and sweet in 
its attractiveness, appealing at 
once to the eyes of the travel- worn guest. "What 
a lovely place!" she exclaims as she disposes of 
her hand luggage, takes off her hat and wraps 
and looks about relieved and glad that the tire- 
some journey has had so fortunate a termination. 
Perfect freshness of curtains, table and bureau 




132 



THE SPARE ROOM 

coverings is an important requisite, and no spare 
room where a guest is expected, is complete with- 
out flowers in bowls and vases. What such a 
welcome means I never fully realized until once 
when I arrived, all unknown, in a foreign land, 
and found in the chamber assigned me quantities 
of pansies, exquisite in color and of heavenly 
fragrance, arranged in shallow bowls upon the 
bureau and table. Whenever I see pansies now- 
adays it brings back that pleasant house — the 
polished brasses of the door, the white steps, the 
rosy-cheeked maid coming out to the cab, in her 
black-stuff gown, pretty apron and cap with 
floating strings — all in readiness for the dinner 
which would shortly be served. 

As the hostess seldom or never occupies the 
spare chamber she is sometimes unaware of its 
shortcomings, especially those of the bed,the mat- 
tress that may abound in lumps and ridges and 
broken springs. There should be abundant bed- 
covering, both comforters and blankets. How- 
ever much some may object to the former, there 

133 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

is nothing that quite takes their place. A small, 
soft pillow should always be provided. 

Who that hates to sleep, or rather, doze, in 
a semi-sitting position, has not been disheartened 
by the sight of huge, hard, smooth pillows that 
display the lace and embroidery of their cover- 
ing to perfection, but are as little conducive to 
repose as an ancestral tombstone ? Still worse is 
the bolster, even harder, stiff and round, with 
which one is sometimes left alone and entirely 
unprotected. The expedients that must be re- 
sorted to in contingencies are secrets that 
die with one — chair cushions, newspapers, and 
even one's clothing rolled into a bundle and 
slipped under the lumpy mattress. There are the 
experienced who carry with them always a small, 
soft cushion that adds fervency to their prayers 
of gratitude on many a night that, otherwise, 
would be sleepless. A shortage of bed-clothing, 
of which the hostess is often quite unconscious, is 
not an uncommon occurrence, even in houses 
where lavishness is the rule in almost every other 
particular. There are people who are always 

134 



THE SPARE ROOM 

vv^arm, like polar bears, and who have little sym- 
pathy for the feeble and thin-blooded. They can- 
not realize what it is to shudder and shiver under 
one light coverlet, until one is forced to rise and 
heap wraps and clothing over the counterpane, 
supplemented, possibly, by the floor rug. 

Our English cousins, who are but indifferent 
cooks, and many of whom appear to have only 
the most rudimentary ideas of the primary colors, 
are wise in other lore that we should do well to 
acquire. 

One thing they consider imperatively neces- 
sary, upon which Charles Reade, forgotten, now, 
like others of his peers, has discoursed at length ; 
this is — airing the sheets, — in the sun in sum- 
mer, and in front of the fire in winter. 

Another good English custom is, placing a 
lounge at the foot of the bed that the latter may 
not be disarranged by use during the day. Chairs 
should be chosen for pure comfort and not merely 
for appearance, although it is possible to com- 
bine the two. Looks alone cannot be relied on; 
each must be sat in — tried — before it is bought 

135 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

and sent home. Many a pleasing arm-chair, 
judged only by externals, proves to be an aggre- 
gation of knobs and convex curves to which an 
elastic serpent alone could adjust itself. 

The pictures and ornaments should not be 
too many. Each should be as good of its kind as 
possible, chosen with care and taste. A good 
New England bishop who had an abounding 
sense of humor, used to tell of his adventures in 
the spare rooms of his diocese. In one house he 
was shown to a guest chamber, in which, prob- 
ably, there had never been a fire. The mercury 
stood at zero; frost coated the windows, and he 
saw by the dim light of his candle, through the 
cloud of his congealing breath, a row of — silver 
coffin plates, gruesomely arranged on the mantel! 
They had been thriftily removed from the family 
coffins and there preserved as mementoes. 

As to pictures, I am reminded of a fine wood- 
cut framed and hung opposite the bed, in another 
spare room. It represented a lowering sky and 
heavy spray tossed high against the rocky cliffs. 
In this room a member of the family lay ill with 

136 



THE SPARE ROOM 

fever through many painful weeks. Even m his 
delirium his eyes were fixed upon that picture of 
cool, tossing spray, and when he recovered he said 
that it did more to save his life than all the doc- 
tor's medicine. 

In still another spare room, dear to me from 
a hundred pleasant associations, the pale green 
wall-paper and the white matting gave always 
the impression of a grotto under the sea, an effect 
heightened by the screen of dancing leaves 
pierced through with sunshine, outside the win- 
dow. In this chamber of peace, when the sleeper 
awakened to the consciousness of the most luxuri- 
ous bed ever devised, her eyes rested on a beauti- 
ful French lithograph of Rose and Blanche 
Simon — the lovely twin sisters in "The Wan- 
dering Jew" — and their faithful mastiff, "Kill- 

joy." 

In the present superabundance of bridge prizes 
and anniversary souvenirs, to say nothing of the 
trophies of universal travel, far too much of 
which goes into the guest chamber, the tendency 
is toward what our grandmothers called "clut- 

137 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ter." The picture cards, illuminated mottoes, 
bits of china, baskets and bibelots of all kinds, 
give an effect of smothered crowding. 

An old friend of mine — past grand mistress 
in the art of perfect housekeeping — will have 
none of these things. She has even banished table 
covers. The furniture is severely plain, with pol- 
ished surfaces and little carving. There is noth- 
ing to catch and hold dust. Pincushion and 
bureau covers are of pure white linen, changed 
frequently and carefully laundered. The dress- 
ing table is provided with a generous supply of 
pins of all kinds, sizes and colors, and with hair- 
pins of assorted sizes. The match holder is al- 
ways full, and a receptacle is also placed in 
plain view for those that have been used, so that 
they will not be put back among those that have 
not been lighted ; or, while still burning, be tossed 
into the waste basket — for there is a roomy 
waste-basket — and so start a fire that may burn 
the house to the ground. 

A bureau, or chiffonier, is a necessity — or "a 
chest of drawers" of some sort. Nothing is more 

138 



THE SPARE ROOM 

trying or inconvenient than to "live in a trunk," 
forced to lift the heavy trays out and put them 
back whenever something is wanted, which is al- 
ways sure to be in the very bottom. This is en- 
dured, with countless other miseries, by those who 
have become nomads through their own fault, or 
by undeserved misfortune. But there should be 
better provision within the home. 

The writing desk, always conspicuous in Eng- 
lish houses, is being better appreciated and more 
generally domesticated, of late years, in our own 
homes. It should be properly fitted out with 
pens, both sharp and blunt points, paper cutter, 
writing materials, postage stamps and blotting 
pads. The true lady bountiful does not omit post 
cards, domestic and foreign, or blanks for post- 
ofBce money orders, which, presented at the re- 
ceiving window, previously filled out, save time 
and, often, temper. 

The desk, or table which is a satisfactory sub- 
stitute, should not have underneath it either 
drawers or that terrible little shelf which makes 
a comfortable position, long maintained, impos- 

139 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

sible. Those who write steadily for an hour or 
more at a time must be able to extend their feet 
at their ease. 

When there is a grate, or a fireplace — and 
blessed be the habitation in which the guest cham- 
ber affords either one or the other — the fuel 
should always be laid ready to light. Even dur- 
ing the long, hot American summer there come 
damp, chilly days when a fire is required, not 
alone for its cheerfulness, but as a means of ward- 
ing off rheumatism and ague. For there are still 
thousands of the benighted who have not been 
brought to that beatific state of mind wherein 
they have learned to regard bodily pangs as mere 
errors of mortal mind. Of course, for those who 
have advanced beyond this weak "belief" in dis- 
ease, no such precaution is necessary. 

There should be also in the guest room — for 
the convenience of the woman guest — a small 
work-basket with a lid — always with a lid — 
supplied with thimble, scissors that will cut and 
with buttons, hooks and eyes, thread, silk and 
cotton, coarse and fine, and of several colors. The 

140 



THE SPARE ROOM 

visitor may have forgotten her own, in this age 
of ready-made clothing and darning attachments 
to sewing machines, and it may be urgently neces- 
sary to sew on a button, mend a ripped glove, or 
take a stitch where gathers or plaits have given 
way, or an unlucky tear needs instant attention. 
Such damage cannot always be repaired with 
substitutes for the needle. Mending materials, 
just the ones that are required, and ready at 
hand, are a boon that will be gratefully appre- 
ciated. 

A roomy shoe bag should also be fastened se- 
curely to the inside of the closet door. There is 
nothing more unpleasant to step on in the dark 
than a shoe that has been left lying about, and no 
matter how carefully boots and slippers are set 
away in corners, or under the bureau, they have 
an unexplainable faculty for gathering dust, all 
of which explains the real and crying need of a 
shoe bag nailed to the inside of the closet door. 

There should always be plenty of reading mat- 
ter, books and magazines, light and serious, not 
only for the time of afternoon seclusion, but as a 

141 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

means of passing possible hours of sleeplessness, 
when the night seems endless. 

When everything has been made ready for the 
expected visitor, the mistress, no matter what 
may be Euphemia's proficiency, should take "a 
last look around." Something particularly neces- 
sary may have been misplaced, or forgotten. As 
a rule, guests bring with them their own toilet 
articles, but occasionally it happens that one has 
been urged to spend the night unexpectedly, and 
must depend upon her hostess's furnishing. Once, 
in the writer's experience, under such circumstan- 
ces, the combs and brush were missing, having 
been placed in a drawer and forgotten at the last 
general cleaning. The visitor was forced to ar- 
range her hair, before joining the family at 
breakfast, with her small and brittle side-combs. 

Finally, and not least important, the hostess 
should not take it amiss, if the visitor chooses to 
spend some hours each day in the quiet and peace- 
ful room that has been given her. It is rest and 
refreshment for both, and, like Portia's quality 
of mercy, is twice blessed. 

149 




The Sewing- Room 

No matter what glamour may be 
thrown around it, the sewing-room 
is rarely inviting. The sewing- 
machine is hopelessly utilitarian, 
although a praiseworthy effort has 
been made to improve its appear- 
ance, making it like the cabinet organ that rears 
aloft a highly elaborate structure of scrollwork, 
shelves and brackets; or the square piano in its 
polished case which must still be supported by 
four stodgy legs. The sewing-machine is as 
necessary as the kitchen range, or the stationary 

143 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

wash-tubs, and almost as difficult to deal with 
from a decorative point of view. 

It is now imperfectly disguised with doors, or 
as a table sunk in a box-like arrangement with 
a flat top over which a neat cover may be spread ; 
but, with this device, there are still the betraying 
wheel and treadles. 

Then, the cutting table, it is held, must also 
be a thing for purely common use — not too 
good to be scratched by pins and needles, or 
scorched when the flatiron accidentally slips 
from the pressing board laid across it. I have a 
confessed love for suitable, handsome clothes, but 
a line stretched across a corner of the sewing- 
room strung with tissue paper patterns mysteri- 
ously traced, figured and snipped, produces in 
me instantly an access of dull spirits. It is per- 
haps what psychologists call "unconscious cere- 
bration" — the indefinite recollection of madden- 
ing struggles that I have had with patterns of 
the same kind, having been born with a deficient 
sense of proportion. 

The sewing-room is a modern torture chamber 

144 



THE SEWING-ROOM 

to the inefficient needlewoman — it is the place 
wherein she has ruined yards of good material, 
cut skirts upside down, made two sleeves for the 
same armhole and "run" her seams straight 
where they should have been on the bias. 

Said a woman whom I knew well, and who, 
with other natural mechanical limitations has the 
misfortune to be left-handed: "I have always 
dashed as fast as possible past the sewing-room 
door, ever since I cut the sleeves of my summer 
silk by the pattern for Willie's knickerbockers." 

Of course, she did not mean to do it; it was 
just a mistake. 

With other unpleasantnesses — to those who 
have no gift for sewing — are the scraps on the 
floor, the pins that are dropped, the dreary paper 
boxes of "findings" and , trimmings — each and 
several, painful reminders of the difficult and 
gradual stages through which even the simplest 
garment must pass to its final completion — the 
fitting, the draping, the finishing, and, if luck 
is against one, the melancholy altering. Nowhere 
about the whole house can there be so much fa- 



145 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

tigue, anxiety and bother as in the sewing-room, 
unless it happen to be the habitat of one to the 
manner born, who loves to sew and knows how. 

The mother who directs and assists at the regu- 
lar autumn and spring visitations, witnesses there 
more bad temper and ingratitude — often from 
daughters who are ordinarily amiable and re- 
spectful — than she experiences anywhere else. 
If the walls could speak they would echo such 
outbursts as: "I don't like it at aZZ;" "it sags in 
the back," "it wrinkles under the arms," "it hangs 
abominably," "it is too tight in the neck," inter- 
spersed with sighs and even sobs. 

Occasionally one outside hears a sharp, em- 
phatic "stand stilir as if the one within were ad- 
dressing a restive horse. It may then be inferred 
that Susie is trying to see the back of her waist, 
which is being .adjusted by the usually patient 
elder sister, who also helps, when the work 
presses. 

But notwithstanding that these unpleasant as- 
sociations of the sewing-room must be, it should 
be arranged so as to mitigate such miseries, as 

146 



THE SEWING-ROOM 

far as possible. It may be remarked just here 
that, as in the case of the laundry, it is a blessing 
to be able to shut the work to which the sewing- 
room is dedicated all off in one place, where strips 
of woollen stuff, or mushn, will not be trailed 
on the stairs, or loose spools, rolling about, serve 
as stumbling blocks for those who have never 
acquired skill on roller-skates. 

The door can then be closed on the whirr of 
the sewing-machine, if it should be the sort that 
whirrs; upon the discussions, upbraidings and 
protests that may occur, should there be great 
provocation; enabling the affairs of the house to 
move on without interruption — with no re- 
minder as to what is going on, except the appear- 
ance of the sewing woman at the luncheon table, 
or at dinner, when that meal is quite informal. 

I know of just one sewing-room that can be 
called a truly inviting place — ^ that is, for a sew- 
ing-room, which must always be judged by a 
standard of its own. It must be plainly stated, 
however, that the mistress of that house never 
makes mistakes. She never cuts a waist — a bod- 

147 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ice, as our English cousins say, and perhaps 
more correctly — wrong side out, or upside down. 
Her "creations" are never experimental. When 
she unrolls her material, having a clear, practical 
mind, she knows just what she means to do, and 
does it. Nobody ever sobbed in her sewing- 
room. Nothing ever came out of it that was not 
perfection — artistic, graceful, tasteful perfec- 
tion. Whether it was an evening gown for 
Katherine, or a "Brownie" suit for little Henry, 
it was all the same; there was nothing that she 
could not make and make well, for she could 
measure things "to a thread," and knew every 
hieroglyphic on the patterns, of whatsoever 
name, number or description. 

Her sewing-room was at the back of the house. 
The floor was of polished wood, without so much 
as a rug; the v/alls pale yellow like hazy sun- 
shine; a wardrobe let into a recess had both 
shelves and drawers. There was a good folding 
mirror, in which you could see not only the front 
of a gown but the lines in the back of the waist. 



THE SEWING-ROOM 

The "form" — a convenience that cannot be 
dispensed with, however much it may be objected 
to, and justly, on aesthetic grounds — occupied 
a secluded nook all to itself, when its services 
were not required. The cutting table was of 
oak with a smooth covering of dark green oil- 
cloth. Upon a small side-table, always in readi- 
ness, was a small gas stove for heating flatirons. 
In this model sewing-room the purely ornamental 
had not been forgotten. There were photographic 
copies of good pictures upon the walls ; the chairs 
wxre low — except the one at the sewing-machine 
— and were, of course, without arms. An ample 
waste-basket held the scraps and ravellings that 
were never allowed to accumulate under foot. 
There was also, at all times, thread of all kinds, 
buttons, hooks and eyes, tape and other staples, 
with pins and needles, bought by the gross, in 
their own drawers, always ready when needed. 
The windows commanded cheerful views of gar- 
den and shrubbery. All the leading authorities 
on frills and furbelows were filed and placed 
where they could be conveniently consulted. The 

149 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

presiding genius of this sewing-room was what 
we now call *'an old-fashioned mother." While 
she wished her daughters to be clever, accom- 
plished women — as they were — ; to enjoy their 
brief youth in all pleasant, rational ways ; at the 
same time, she insisted that they should be well 
grounded in the domestic arts. Fortunately 
they agreed with her and willingly accepted in- 
struction at her hands and from the skilled seam- 
stress who came twice yearly for a fortnight's 
engagement. The daughters were teachable and 
worked with a will, becoming proficient in all the 
mysteries of making buttonholes, overcasting, 
shirring, and the like. The machine hummed 
steadily under their active young feet, and the 
regular semi-annual sewing season had a quality 
of cheerfulness which was almost gaiety in that 
house which I do not recall elsewhere. That 
sewing-room was remarkable for another unique 
characteristic — it was about the only one I have 
ever known that was not avoided by the men of 
the family; for it is well understood that the 
superior sex has an inbred love of comfort, like 

150 



THE SEWING-ROOM 

that of feline creatures who always find a cozy 
corner and a soft cushion. 

The father would look in as he passed the door 
on his way down-town, and the brothers could 
be heard, when they came home, running up- 
stairs, interested in what was going on, ready to 
admire and criticize, offering opinions that were 
never despised and were sometimes even ac- 
cepted. 

In this family, endowed with only moderate 
means, the daughters were always well dressed, 
and had many simple, pretty gowns because they 
could make them themselves, much more taste- 
fully and skilfully than could the average dress- 
maker. They expected to do it, and — because 
they had been well taught and knew how, v/ith- 
out costly mistakes and disappointing experi- 
ments — it was to them thoroughly congenial 
work. Of course, having had practical experience, 
when at some later time they can afford to hire 
their gowns made, or supervise a sewing-room in 
their own houses, they will be able to plan and ar- 
range the sewing in the way which is always such 

131 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

a saving of time and is so helpful to the seam- 
stress, leaving her to devote her energy to more 
particular and important things. This, of course, 
provided — that that important person does not 
insist on being a dictator, and is gracious enough 
to allow her patrons to have what they like, since 
they know their own minds and expect to wear 
the clothes themselves. 

What they have learned in their mother's sew- 
ing-room will stay with them through life, to be 
imparted to their daughters after them. Home 
work and hand-work, when well done, will al- 
ways have a peculiar value, and it will be a long 
time before ready-made clothing will be univers- 
ally worn, the key turned in the lock of the sew- 
ing-room door, and the seamstress, imbued with 
the spirit of the age, left free to follow what she 
mistakenly believes to be "a higher vocation." 



152 




XVIT 



Euphemia's Bower 

N the Middle West, especially the 
states along the Ohio River, there 
has been an enormous invasion of 
negroes across the border from 
Kentucky and Tennessee and even 
further south. This has not been 
altogether deplored by the white residents of 
these states. There are some thousands who, re- 
alizing that they are not much worse off than they 
were before, are very apt to say to their Northern 
sisters, ''Now you will see for j^ourselves" ; and 
their Northern sisters are seeing. 




l.>3 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

There are still in the world, notwithstanding 
the gradual spread of enlightenment, many sin- 
cere persons who have no knowledge of, or be- 
lief in, the self-evident truths of ethnology. They 
think that hereditary traits can be changed, or 
effaced, by a miracle, and that racial peculiarities 
disappear with a change in surroundings and the 
distribution of leaflets. There has been an im- 
mense advance in the regions named, within the 
past ten years, a growing disposition to make the 
best of apparently fixed conditions and not to 
expect the impossible. The colored maid-of-ali- 
work, with few exceptions, since her emigration 
north, has become a law unto herself. She ar- 
ranges her own hours, with increasingly long per- 
iods of recreation. While she likes to have a 
room in the house where she is employed, for her 
personal convenience, that she may stop in, if 
the weather is bad, or she feels indisposed to go 
abroad, she prefers to live elsewhere. By this 
arrangement she comes to get the breakfast at 
any hour she likes, or not at all; and she has the 
great advantage of being out of sight upon the 

154 



EUPHEMIA'S BOWER 

advent of guests, or during other domestic ir- 
regularities. She can be neither restrained nor 
influenced. In southern Ohio, Indiana and Illi- 
nois she has taken the place, almost wholly, of 
her white predecessor, who has gone to the fac- 
tory or shop because she has her evenings, holi- 
dstys and Sundays, and because she escapes the 
odium of being called a servant. 

Of course, in the factory or shop, the earnings 
are small, the employee must pay board and room 
rent, unless she lives at hom^e — in which case 
she helps support the family and can save still 
less. Those who are left for the kitchen are 
decidedly not sl saving remnant, or in any sense, 
a survival of the fittest. 

The old rule of one afternoon, and a part of 
alternate Sundays off, or every Sunday off, and 
nightly retiring to be not later than ten o'clock, 
is a dead letter in the domestic code. 

In most cases Euphemia, as well as her colored 
sister, hurries through her tasks that she may don 
the large pearl-colored hat and braided walking 
dress that she is buying on the instalment plan, to 

155 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

promenade the street* up to the very latest sec- 
ond that will enable her to rush home and broil 
a beefsteak — or fry it, if she dare. She is not 
really in the least a domestic character, and has 
not the slightest vestige of attachment to local- 
ity. She enjoys rapid change — scooping up 
the miscellaneous strewings of misshapen shoes, 
strings, picture-cards and garments, throwing 
them into her big trunk with various articles 
which she has acquired by right of discovery, 
jumping up and down on the bulging lid, snap- 
ping the key in the lock and engaging in coquet- 
tish persiflage with the expressman who hauls 
it to the next place. During this hegira Euphe- 
mia thinks complacently of the pale blue silk 
blouse and the five-dollar gold piece which was 
given her at Christmas for services not rendered, 
and turns her back upon the vacated den to seek 
another, without a pang of regret. "Den" is 
not used in this connection as a common term 
meant to describe the workroom of a literary 
toiler. 

She leaves behind her strange, musty odors of 

156 



EUPHEMIA'S BOWER 

stale food and cheap perfume, and if she is very 
advanced, of cigarettes, with scraps of pie left 
under her pillow, and other remnants of noctur- 
nal refreshment. 

Since this description has not been exagger- 
ated, "and naught set down in malice," the ques- 
tion may be asked, why trouble about Euphemia's 
bower? She does not care for it; she will not 
keep it tidy ; why not, then, devote all one's ener- 
gies to making it safe ? To this end the eminently 
practical mind will suggest a tiled or concrete 
floor, and w^alls and ceilings of corrugated iron 
to avert danger of fire from matches or the light 
which burns all night; an iron bedstead, inde- 
structible toilet articles, and chairs that will re- 
sist the roughest handling. 

There are well-meaning humanitarians who 
waste much sympathy on the cheerless quarters 
that are sometimes assigned Euphemia. With- 
out wishing to subject myself to charges of heart- 
lessness, I am forced to declare that, it is, in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, sympathy 
wasted. Euphemia does not care for ornament- 

157 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ation, except pictures that she has cut from the 
comic page of the Sunday newspapers, or tintype 
groups of herself and "Johnny," taken in a booth 
at a street fair. 

I once studied, with much profit, an illustration 
in a woman's magazine. It was satirical. Edith, 
the young bride, had begun housekeeping — in- 
nocent creature — with the firm intention that 
Euphemia should have everything in the way of 
possible "uplift." She began her labors with all 
the enthusiasm of youth and fatuous hope. Pretty 
dotted muslin curtains veiled the lower panes of 
the windows in Euphemia's room ; pots of bloom- 
ing plants stood in a row along the upper sash; 
there was a rocking chair with a cushion, a draped 
dressing table with a mirror such as Edith would 
perhaps have chosen for herself. This was Scene 
I. In Scene II Euphemia had been in possession 
for a fortnight and a day, and had then left 
abruptly. It was a tableau of destruction with 
Edith weeping over the ruins. Of the blooming 
plants but a few dried sticks remained ; the filmy 
sash curtains had been jerked down for a better 

158 



EUPHEMIA'S BOWER 

view of the back premises and the garbage man, 
while the cracks in the mirror resembled pictures 
of lightning. And this is precisely what happens 
in almost every instance, as the lady lecturer on 
domestic science, who believes firmly in the "on- 
ward" movement, would have discovered if she 
had not always lived in hotels. Of course, it 
would be a bitter disappointment to her, as it 
was to Edith, whose aims were sincere and high. 

However, there is no need to despair, even in 
the face of such disappointment many times re- 
peated, although evolution may be both pro- 
gressive and retrogressive. 

In New Zealand there once existed a powerful 
bird, taller than a giraffe, with legs as huge and 
strong as those of a cart-horse. It was the wing- 
less Dinornis. It disappeared so recently that 
fragments of eggs have been discovered within 
the memory of the present generation. This 
leads ornithologists to hope that living specimens 
will yet be found in the unexplored and souther- 
most island of the group. 

So there; may be some unexplored region in 

159 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

which are yet hving good Euphemias who have 
mated with their kind and reared children with 
whom we shall one day be brought face to face. 

I myself have seen three such — and there 
may be others. In spite of my strictures upon 
maids of color, I must confess that two of these 
paragons were negroes. The first was named 
Azalee. She had entered the high school with 
excellent grades. Her penmanship was far, far 
better than my own. She spoke excellent Eng- 
lish, and she M^as fond of reading. She was quick, 
orderly, skilful in all things. She kept her room 
in exquisite order, and she was loved and re- 
spected in the family where she lived. Her com- 
fort was considered and provided for, and she 
was allowed to take the books and magazines 
and keep them as long as she liked. Possessing 
dignity and self-respect • — tiny creature that she 
was — she never abused her privileges. 

The other exception, also colored, was unedu- 
cated, and not so acutely conscientious as Azalee, 
but competent to an astonishing degree. She, 
also, took an intense pride in her room, which she 

160 



E U P H E M I A ' S BOWER 

cleaned thoroughly once a week and dusted daily. 
It was, in her opinion, quite as nice "as any of 
the young ladies' rooms." In the amazing eight 
years of her occupancy, she acquired — and law- 
fully — considerable personal property — not 
only the ordinary possessions, but two silk dresses 
and money in the bank. She had one weakness 
— doting affection for a coal-black cat which she 
permitted to sleep in the centre of her snow-white 
counterpane, possibly enjoying the pleasing 
contrast. 

The third was an American, the daughter of a 
well-to-do farmer. She became discontented at 
home, where she washed and ironed, baked and 
brewed, swept and dusted, milked and churned, 
for no wages at all, and received only the scanti- 
est and commonest clothing in exchange for con- 
stant drudgery, while her brothers, for far less 
work, had their horses and buggies and their 
share of all the crops harvested on the place. She 
liked the steam heat and the electric light of the 
city house, and she, too, had a taste for good 
reading which she was allowed to gratify, and 

161 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

far better manners than many a society leader. 
She, also, excelled in fine needlework, in hem- 
stitching, drawn-work and embroidery, and in 
this profitable occupation she spent the greater 
part of her leism^e with no one to intrude upon 
the privacy which was permitted her, after her 
mistress's work was done. 

She was given many privileges in the house be- 
cause she, too, never presumed upon favors 
shown her. She came and went as she liked, be- 
cause she never left the house with work neg- 
lected or undone. She saw her friends, and was 
appealed to on questions where her opinion was 
desired and valued. She never wished to in- 
trude in the family councils and knew that she 
could not wait at table and at the same time "eat 
with the family." 

Little Azalee still blesses the household of 
which she is the guardian angel — and her mis- 
tress is envied of all her acquaintances — the 
little negro maid so loyal and grateful that no 
offer of higher wages and lighter labor can lure 
her from her allegiance. Rosabella has set up 

162 



E U P H E M I A'S BOWER 

housekeeping on her own account; and the last 
mentioned has sought a wider and easier field — 
in a hotel. 

While presenting these three rare and cher- 
ished examples, hosts of "those others" rise to 
my mind's eye — a sort of closely- welded human 
chain. One only — because of her marked and 
peculiar gifts — shall be mentioned — German 
Barbara, the dependent employee of an indulg- 
ent mistress in an Ohio town. 

The furnace being inadequate to heat the en- 
tire house, -Barbara was entreated to keep a fire 
in her room in cold weather, a good stove and an 
abundance of fuel being supplied her. Aprons, 
collars and handkerchiefs were bestowed upon 
her in a perfect linen shower. 

She came faltering to her mistress one day, 
with genuine wet, glistening tears streaming 
down her cheeks, and her voice choked with grief. 
She had just received news of her father's death 
in Germany and must go at once because of legal 
difficulties in settling his estate which made her 
presence absolutely necessary. Her room was 

163 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

stripped of everything that could be of seinrice to 
her on the stormy voyage across the Atlantic in 
January. She was loaded with additional gifts 
— warm stockings and petticoats, which she ac- 
cepted with more emotion. Then she took leave 
of her sympathetic employer and went — just 
around the corner, to a new place ! 

She has since married and if there is truth in 
heredity, her progeny will be the shining literary 
and histrionic lights of the oncoming generation. 

Barbara's talents were cruelly wasted in the 
kitchen; she would have shone behind the foot- 
lights in great emotional parts. She was a treas- 
ure lost to melodrama in "The Burglar's Bride," 
or "The Bank Wrecker's Daughter." How she 
would have wept and implored "on bended 
knees" in one of those thrilling compositions in 
which there is a real saw-mill. It is assuredly 
not in schools of dramatic art that the syndicate 
should search for genius, but in Euphemia's 
bower — or Barbara's ; for though the names are 
different, the principle remains the same. 



164 




XVIII 

Mistress and Maid 



T 



HERE are irreconcilable differ- 
ences among human beings. A 
Protectionist of the straitest sect 
will never be convinced that tariff 
reduction is not tantamount to 
political and industrial ruin. The 
Free Trader is as certain that the tariff is a tax 
paid out of the consumer's pocket. The convert 
to Predestination considers the advocate of Free 
Will mistaken if not lost, while the liberal 
minded and those holding other theological views 
pity and wonder at both. 



165 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

From an array of illustrations so grave and 
weighty one should approach the relations of 
Euphemia and her mistress, perhaps, by regular 
gradations. But some moments of reflection 
have convinced me that there are none. 

In treating the comprehensive subject of 
power, Emerson has shown us how opposing 
forces struggle ceaselessly for supremacy: the 
strong animal fighting and winning the mastery 
of the herd ; the new boy contending for his right- 
ful place in school ; the born ruler impressing his 
fellow-men with the courage that inspires them 
to follow him to the death. 

The kitchen is another arena in which the 
measuring of wills goes on ceaselessly. 

Euphemia arrives to reconnoitre. She wants 
to know what is not to be done. She wears her 
best clothes, the large hat and the red cloak 
which she thinks give her an air of distinction. 
Her mien is resolute and severe, and in her pre- 
liminary remarks she uses the largest words she 
knows. 



166 



MISTRESS AND MAID 

She seats herself, looks her would-be superior 
over and mentally decides: "She hain't much." 

If she perceives physical wealaiess, timidity 
or moral cowardice, if she has an inkling that 
there are young ladies or sickness in the house; 
that for some necessary cause there are meals to 
be served at irregular hours, she becomes still 
more bold and stern. 

She asks questions like these: 

"Do you have dinner at six o'clock?" 

"Who scrubs the porches?" 

"Is the washing done out?" 

"Do you keep a man?" 

"How much time can I have off?" 

And there is not a single "ma'am" in the whole 
category. 

Well for the mistress — perhaps — if these 
questions can be answered in the negative or af- 
firmative, as Euphemia wishes and expects them 
to be answered. If so, and there is, in addition, 
a complete surrender of the supposedly master 
mind, a meek resolve not to cross her, or vex her, 
or ask more of her than can be avoided, all may 

167 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

go v/ell. This, however, should not be expected 
as a fixed eertaint}^ With the vast majoiity of 
human beings, most of whom are still far from 
regeneration, there is an opinion that the more 
advantage one can take, the more of this world's 
goods and pleasures he may count upon having. 

One who is modest and deferential and con- 
siderate simply suffers for his virtues, and the 
more he concedes the more will be demanded 
of him. The feminine pronoun may be substi- 
tuted in this equation — and the answer will re- 
main the same. 

Euphemia is only obeying the ruling spirit of 
the hour ; ask for a great deal if you expect any- 
thing at all. Fortunately, that rule, like some 
others, works both ways. The woman who meets 
the above questions with a boldness that chal- 
lenges Euphemia's, stands a much better chance 
of victory than if she met her in a milder and 
more pacific manner. The days of gentleness 
are past; it is the era of physical culture, golf, 
rolled-up sleeves, bare heads and sun-baked 
complexions; of strenuousness in every walk of 

168 



MISTRESS AND MAID 

life. There are no more passages marked "pian- 
issimo" in our national airs. 

Edith, therefore, should sit erect, look Euphe- 
mia straight in the eye, anticipate her demands 
if possible ; and, though it may seem rude, answer 
all her questions in a breath without so much as 
a conmfia between them: "I have dinner at half 
past six no one scrubs the porches the v/ashing 
is sent out I do not keep a man and you can 
have the usual time off and no more." 

Of course there are individuals who could not 
be dealt with thus, successfully; who would be 
stampeded at once. She who decamps, under 
such circumstances, might be just the one long 
sought for and never found before, which would 
be sadder than almost any affliction short of be- 
reavement or bankruptcy; but it is much more 
probable that it is a happy deliverance. 

Half the friction between mistress and maid 
comes from too great expectation on either side. 

The mistress, herself, is not infallible. Every 
day of her life she probably forgets or neglects 
some pressing duty. She, too, breaks dishes, does 

169 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

not know where she has put her eyeglasses, loses 
her pocket-book, and goes to bed without burning 
out the light in the library. She forgets that the 
coffee is out and sends her husband to his office 
with a depressing cup of tea, instead. Of course 
she does not — in those sad hours when she is 
struggling against the powers of dirt single- 
handed — stuff the best table-cloth under the 
sink, wipe up the kitchen floor with a damask 
napkin and throw silver spoons in the garbage. 
But she expects Euphemia to be a person of flaw- 
less memory, which would make her — not a 
humble employee — or, anyhow, an employee — 
but an intellectual prodigy. If she could always 
remember, if she possessed unfailing skill, fore- 
sight, great intelligence, as has been already re- 
marked, she would not be spending her days in 
anybody's kitchen. She is there through stress 
of perhaps pitiful and tragic circumstances; 
through lack of high qualities; because she is 
what she is. Were she something more, she 
might be a lady clerk, a stenographer, a teacher, 
an editor, or a physician. Though, so far as 

170 



MISTRESS AND MAID 

that goes, she doubtless prepares a much better 
meal, keeps her kitchen in better order, than 
could many a teacher, no matter how competent, 
or a physician, no matter how learned. 

In this connection I remember that one of the 
most cheerless homes I have ever known was 
that of a successful teacher, and one of the worst 
meals I have ever tried to eat was set forth upon 
the table by a woman physician, who knew all the 
evil effects of bad cookery. 

"Followers" are objectionable; but Euphemia 
is young. She has that love of companionship 
which is natural in normal youth, and that de- 
sire for the attentions of the opposite sex which 
is just as natural. If her mistress can see no 
charm in "Tom," or "Charley," or "Johnny," 
who shuffles his feet and looks sheepish when she 
comes in upon them, in the midst of their con- 
fidences, she should reflect that she does not see 
the young swain as Euphemia sees him, or know 
him as she knows him — the generous giver of 
"mixed candy," of strong scents in bottles 
marked "perfume," or as the gallant escort on 



171 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

Fourth of July excursions, or to the *'op'ry," as 
Euphemia designates the entertainment at the 
ten, fifteen and twenty-five cent theatres. She 
is a creature of few resources. But for her chosen 
famihars, she would have many long hours of 
dull solitude. For to her, the whole wide realm 
of books may have no existence, and, often, she 
is a stranger in a strange land. 

Many well-born, well-educated women have 
no power of reasonable command ; they lay down 
the law in the voice of insolence and with an eye 
that either freezes or scorches. Often they are 
quite unconscious of their objectionable manner. 
A successful teacher was once asked why her 
pupils so rarely disobeyed her. 

"Because," she said, "I rarely ever command. 
I request, and with a politeness I would show an 
equal." 

With the fault of insolence, unconscious or 
premeditated, there is often another — a sure 
promoter of discord. This is an inability to 
know one's mind; the habit of changing orders 
— of taking Euphemia from one thing before it 

172 



MISTRESS AND MAID 

is half finished, to begin, possibly, two or three 
others. This would vex and distract the most 
well disposed. The fact should not be lost sight 
of, as has been said, that Euphemia is not a per- 
son of strong intellect. No one can do good 
work in any calling who ventures half a dozen 
things at once, and certainly not Euphemia, who 
can scarcely write her name. 

"I must have my work done in my way," is 
the arbitrary dictum of the mistress who calls 
Euphemia from scrubbing the kitchen floor or 
blacking the stove, to prepare the luncheon for 
unexpected guests whom she has brought home 
with her from a committee meeting at the club. 

"Then do it yourself," Euphemia will answer, 
if she is a young woman of spirit, as will all her 
successors to the end of the chapter. What just 
person who has ever known the unpleasantness 
of such a lack of system can blame them? 

Consideration — the ability to put herself in 
another's place on the part of the mistress — 
would do much to win Euphemia's loyalty 
and good-will, if she is not entirely destitute of 

173 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

these characteristics. They are not possessed by 
all. There are among the serving classes, occa- 
sionally, as among the served, a rapacity and law- 
lessness that are beyond control. 

There are few women, no matter how compe- 
tent and clear-headed, who can endure to have 
people about while they are in the kitchen cook- 
ing. Yet it is expected that Euphemia, who un- 
derstands her business — sometimes — shall pre- 
serve her equanimity when she is interfered with ; 
or being supervised as she sifts the flour or peels 
the potatoes, or being taught a new way of beat- 
ing eggs, or being stopped while moulding pastry 
or stirring the cake, which she knows will turn 
out all right — faith that has always been well 
grounded. 

There are mistresses who do not want to in- 
terfere ; who are only too glad to let well enough 
alone; but they are not much more numerous 
than Euphemias of flawless memory and ex- 
traordinary intellect. There is a name for un- 
reasonable meddling and petty fault-finding — 
"nagging." Of all small vices it is the hardest 



174 



MISTRESS AND MAID 

to bear in patience and silence. There are ami- 
able criminals whose society, under proper re- 
straint, I should greatly prefer to that of the 
man or woman who nags, for it is not a vice 
monopolized by one sex, although it is generally 
supposed to be. It not unfrequently goads the 
polite and long-suffering to desperation, and it 
is too much to expect Euphemia to exercise 
superhuman self-control where her superiors fail. 
There is a wide difference between a firm and 
persistent enforcement of orders, and perpetual 
bickering, and wise is she who has come to a 
realization of this. 



1T5 




XIX 



Small Politenesses 



VIEWED from a purely selfish 
standpoint, quite aside from any 
considerations of kindness and 
good nature, there is nothing more 
thoroughly profitable than polite- 
ness. There are few who are not 
immediately sensible of the influence of courtesy. 
The curmudgeon who snaps and snarls, the in- 
solent and the too familiar — all may be kept 
within bounds by simple good manners that scorn 
to return incivility in kind. It is a soft but im- 
penetrable garment, against v/hich the shafts of 



176 



SMALL POLITENESSES 

the vulgar and violent fall powerless. When the 
mistress enters the verbal arena with Euphemia, 
meeting her crude insolence with railing and up- 
braiding, she is pitting herself against an an- 
tagonist who can outdo her in volume and in the 
vocabulary of abuse and who has, in addition, 
the callousness of a crustacean — which has been 
graphically described as "a creature all shell and 
claws." 

But the minor rules of politeness, which are 
the very essence of the best home life, do not 
apply altogether to Euphemia. They are far 
less a matter of words than of deeds. The basis of 
perfect good manners is always unselfishness — 
which is a truism. One of the most reprehensible 
pieces of bad breeding is irregularity in coming 
to one's meals. The breakfast is kept waiting 
until some member of the family chooses to ap- 
pear, after late rising. Dinner is delayed until 
the soup is cold, and the joint is sodden, because 
Charles wishes to drop in at his club for half an 
hour on his way home, or Annabel prolongs her 
call on a friend, thereby delaying the friend's 
dinner, also. 

177 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

To dawdle over food at table is another form 
of bad manners that should be punished by soli- 
tary confinement and a diet of bread and water. 
Who did not rejoice in the righteous wrath of 
the incomparable Shirley when she turned the 
insolent Mr. Donne out of her garden, after 
having borne with his selfish dilly-dallying over 
the tea-table, and his silly affectation? But we 
need not go so far afield for terrible examples, 
for have we not all sat helpless while Edith 
pecked at her salad, or Charles verbosely and 
heavily explained some philosophical platitude, 
dull as a patent office report? 

This is not to be construed as advice "to bolt 
one's food and run." It is necessary to spend 
sufficient time at table to do justice to one's 
food, to masticate it properly, and allow leisure 
for pleasant and interesting talk. But no one 
person should detain an entire company, unless 
it be some extraordinarily interesting individual 
who is urged to finish the anecdote, or story, with 
which he has been so fortunate as to entertain 
them all. 

178 



SMALL POLITENESSES 

Another common incivility is to neglect, or 
postpone beyond all reasonable limits answering 
letters, and such inquiries in letters as are neither 
unreasonable nor impertinent. Very often both 
sorts come with the morning mail, and for these 
— the unreasonable and the impertinent — si- 
lence and the waste-basket are the appointed por- 
tion. The model correspondent keeps every let- 
ter until it is answered, and places it before her 
on the desk as she replies, referring to the inquir- 
ies it may contain. No one can get the full gist 
of any letter, however brief, from one reading. 

Soiled paper, a slovenly address, the stamp 
put on crooked, or upside down, shabby bits of 
paper, a scrawl in pencil, indecipherable — all 
these call for but one comment — "Alas!" Each 
fault in the list enumerated indicates hurry — a 
desire to be through with the business as soon as 
possible, which is anything but complimentary 
to the person addressed. 

Intolerance and a dictatorial unwillingness 
"to hear the other side," are, fortunately, con- 
versational bad manners that are improving as 

179 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

we lay less stress on mere partisan politics and ir- 
relevant and unfruitful dogma — the two para- 
mount items that once furnished occasion for 
prolonged wrangling. Women, especially, are 
steadily gaining in tolerance and ability to con- 
sider questions from an abstract and impersonal 
standpoint; so much, at any rate, has the office, 
the discipline of business, and the parliamentary 
rule of the club accomplished. 

But there still exists a type with which we 
are all more or less familiar, — the person who 
considers her opinion final upon all questions 
mundane or super-mundane. So long as her 
hearers acquiesce or keep still — prudent silence 
that may irritate but does not provoke — all 
goes well. But presume to doubt, to offer a 
counter statement, and the dogmatic one bristles 
and bridles, flushes and raises her voice, and you 
regret having spoken, unless you think it time 
somebody asserted herself, or you are unwilling 
to sacrifice your inalienable right of free speech. 

With the conversational despot, the only per- 
missible talk is the monologue — and the mono- 

180 



SMALL POLITENESSES 

logue must be hers — to be heard with suppressed 
sighs, with no wandering of drowsy eyes, or fur- 
tive effort to escape. "Turn about is fair play," 
the world over, and the woman who over-indulges 
in monologue should tolerate it in others; but 
she rarely does. 

One of the most comforting of all politenesses 
is the habit of returning promptly that which is 
borrow^ed, and there are some sacred belongings 
which should never be asked for at all. I should 
put at the very head of the list a woman's thimble 
and scissors. 

"Lend me your thimble," begs the foolish vir- 
gin, who was never known to carry any oil in 
her lamp. "I want it only half a second." There- 
upon she stirs up her victim's work-basket, finds 
the thimble and carries it off to her room. A 
little later the victim must hurry to the post-box 
with an important letter and it is necessary, first, 
to take an unanticipated stitch ; the thimble must 
be gone after, asked for, or hunted for, and 
brought back. In those few moments of delay 
the mail is collected, the letter misses the post 

181 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

that should have carried it to its destination. 
Upon this delay may hang innumerable and ir- 
reparable disasters. 

As for scissors, all women except those who 
use them chiefly for extracting corks from bot- 
tles, hold their scissors, sharp and bright, in a 
sort of reverential esteem. They would far rather 
lend their best bonnet than this sacred imple- 
ment. 

To return to the original premise, rudeness, 
primarily, is selfishness — disregard for the 
rights and feelings of others. This manifests it- 
self in innumerable forms. The beauty — or, 
worse still — the person who was once beautiful 
and imagines that her charms are perennial, is, 
we will say, one of a house party. She is invari- 
ably seated in the pleasantest corner of the ve- 
randah; she alwaj^s has the most comfortable 
chair. The lion's share of delicacies and privi- 
leges fall to her, because she has a highly devel- 
oped power of appropriation. If she is one of 
an excursion party she is always found on the 
shady side of the carriage ; she always secures the 

18? 



SMALL POLITENESSES 

lower berth in the Pullman sleeper, and monopo- 
lizes the services of the porter, whom she has 
probably bribed with an excessive fee, quite be- 
yond the means of her companions. 

It is she who takes possession of the toilet 
room, locks the door, and there dresses herself at 
leisure, omitting nothing that may be a help to 
nature — the superfluities that take time and 
pains. She is not aware, apparently, or she does 
not care, that mothers with fretful children who 
want their breakfast, and travellers who must 
leave the train at the next station are waiting her 
sovereign pleasure. 

In most camping parties there is usually some 
one such person — the shirk who refuses to do 
her part, who must be waited on and borne with, 
who expects all things, and does nothing in re- 
turn. To such a woman may be traced the dis- 
banding of many a pleasant coterie, in which all 
but herself had a decent regard for the common 
weal. She finally becomes a burden too great to 
be borne, and because of her meanness and her 
exactions, the pleasure, always so much enjoyed 

183 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

but for her, is given up. Of course, the develop- 
ment of such a character began at home. There 
is many a mother who has a favorite child. By 
some strange injustice this is rarely, or never, the 
most obedient and dutiful. It is more frequently 
the surly, intractable ne'er-do-well, who riots all 
night and sleeps half the day; the peevish, in- 
dolent girl, whom no one ever crosses, for v/hom 
everything is put aside, and who is waited on 
with slavish subservience by all the rest of the 
household. She has her breakfast in bed, served 
upon the finest linen and the best china, little 
luxuries that are permitted no one else. She 
has the first choice in hats and gowns, and the 
others must surrender any selection that they 
may have made, if she is disposed to want it. 

Rarely, indeed, does she reward her mother's 
doting and unjust partiality. It is not to her 
that the parents will look for care and affection 
in their old age. Her self-absorbed girlhood, by 
a natural process of growth, has been a prepar- 
ation for a maturity in which selfishness has in- 
creased and intensified. All the faults of bad 



184 



SMALL POLITENESSES 

breeding have multiplied without let or hind- 
rance, until what were, at best, mere rudimentary 
virtues have disappeared. Old age, filial duty, 
gratitude, are of less account, even, to the woman 
of forty than they were to the spoiled and selfish 
girl in her teens. 



185 




XX 

Questions of Detail 

THERE are many housekeepers 
who have an inherent aversion to 
dirt ; under whose roofs are neither 
moth nor rust, and upon whose 
shining tables no names may be 
written by the betraying finger. 
Yet, under their rule order does not exist. The 
work is never done, everything is at sixes and 
sevens — or at least at twos and threes — a 
milder form of chaos. There seems to be no 
stated time for anything, and nothing in its 
place. The dishes collect from one meal to an- 
ise 



QUESTIONS OF DETAIL 

other, in the absence of a regular servant, until 
the array upon the shelves has been exhausted, 
when a woman, hired by the hour, comes in and 
"cleans up." 

With ordinary people this slackness would 
attract many kinds of vermin — beetles, mice, 
ants — but in that clean woman's house it does 
not. Wash day is a movable feast, — or rather, 
fast day, — and it may fall on Monday, or Sat- 
urday — when it cannot possibly be put off an- 
other minute. At the end of this period — be- 
fore the arrival of the laundress, or before the 
dispatch of the hamper to her, unless the supply 
of house linen is limitless, the family is on the 
shortest practicable allowance. The dinner is 
served on a cloth which, though spotless, has been 
a field of practice for all the varieties of patching 
and darning that could be taught in a German 
school of needlework. When this state of things 
comes to pass, it proves that its promoter has 
"no system" — that she is lacking in the com- 
prehension of details mistakenly considered of 
little consequence. But, just here lies the differ- 



187 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ence between drudgery and efficiency. In spite 
of ceaseless effort, the poor unmethodical crea- 
ture is confronted by rooms never set to rights, 
meals never on time, the work-basket heaped 
with accumulations of mending, waiting some 
future convenience that will never be more con- 
venient than the present. Every emergency 
takes her unawares. She is never prepared, and 
one imagines that she must have been one of 
those unfortunates born out of due season. 

And yet, with a very little planning, the whole 
menage could be reconstructed by one simple 
rule: have a stated time for doing every daily 
task and try to do it at that time. An absolutely 
unalterable law cannot be fixed, for every house 
may be disturbed at any moment, and without 
warning, by accident, sudden illness, or death, 
and at such time all else is lost sight of. But 
these are rare and exceptional circumstances. 
Most lives move on monotonously through many 
years, with little change from day to day. 

Where there are daughters, each should be 
given her task, and it should be changed each 

188 



QUESTIONS OF DETAIL 

week, until she has done all the work about the 
house that the housekeeper should know, and 
then the cycle should begin again. 

In families where no two members are alike 
in looks, manners or character, there is usually 
one who shirks, no matter how industrious the 
others may be. If her unwillingness does not 
come from physical weakness or incapacity, or if 
it is not one of those strange maladies that pre- 
vent her from using the broom or dust-brush, 
should there be no servants in the house, while 
she is still able to attend three receptions in one 
afternoon and dance all night, she should be 
held inexorably to her stint. 

Two or three intelligent, energetic girls, each 
going to her duty as soon as she has finished 
breakfast, can put a house in beautiful order 
within an hour; can prepare a palatable meal, 
can so expedite the sewing that the visitation of 
the seamstress can be appreciably shortened. 
But this is possible only where there is fair and 
honest co-operation. In some households may 
be found one uncomplaining girl upon whom is 



189 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

put all the labor that nobody else will perform. 
She does all the cooking when Euphemia leaves ; 
nobody else can bake the cake, make the pud- 
ding and jam and jelly. She does all the mend- 
ing, and darns all the stockings "because she 
does not mind it." It is elaborately explained 
that Sarah does not care for dress, or society, or 
visiting, or any of the recreations every normal 
girl should enjoy with all the zest that comes 
only in fleeting and enthusiastic youth. They 
do not know what wistful desires, what thwarted 
hopes are hidden deep within her heart, because 
she is too proud to complain, or to ask for the 
appreciation that is withheld. The famity, who 
leave more and more of the work to her, who 
heap it on her patient shoulders, have many en- 
dearing names for her — "good old girl" — 
"dear Sarah" — but their affection expends it- 
self in affectionate expressions, never in lessening 
her labor. 

The difference between good and bad house- 
keeping is not always pronounced. It may be 
often the merest shade, and this entirely per- 

190 



QUESTIONS OF DETAIL 

taining to matters of detail. One may often go 
into a room that has been well swept, well dusted, 
and thoroughly well aired; no flecks of lint are 
blowing about, the back rungs of the chairs have 
had the most conscientious attention; the vases 
have been emptied and scrupulously washed; 
everything has been moved on the mantel, and 
last weeks' newspapers carried to the attic. Yet 
the room does not seem tidy. A glance betrays 
the secret: nothing has been put back quite in 
its place; the rug is just a trifle askew; the shades 
have been carelessly drawn ; some of the curtains 
are looped, or partially looped, while others 
hang straight. 

Yet no one can truthfully say that Euphemia 
has not handled her broom painstakingly, or has 
left behind her accumulations that should be re- 
moved. But one must go over the house after 
her, a touch here, a little rearrangement there — 
all accomplished in a few minutes — and the 
room smiles again, breathing once more its ac- 
customed air of taste and neatness. 

It does not detract from the nutritive quali- 

191 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ties of the beefsteak — given proper broiling — 
if the platter is put on the table obliquely. One's 
hunger will be appeased with food that is whole- 
some and well cooked, even if the knives and 
forks have been flung down with no regard to 
orderly arrangement. But it is by such dis- 
regard of details that the hand of the tyro may 
be seen. 

It is not enough to be clean, to be capable, 
to be willing; to these must be added, if the 
house is really well kept, the cultivated sense of 
arrangement, which can refine the humblest sur- 
roundings, and without which even luxury and 
beauty are cheapened and destroyed. 



192 




XXI 



Euphemia's Unrest 

HO can explain why Euphemia 
is not happy? Never has so much 
been done for her physical well- 
being. Her predecessors, of a for- 
mer generation, employed in the 
city, had to do their work in cold 
houses. Fires were kept going in the bedrooms 
in open grates, the bars of which had to be fre- 
quently black-leaded. Water was carried into 
all these rooms in heavy cans ; feather-beds were 
in general use, which had to be shaken and 
turned — very different from the easy airing and 




193 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

smoothing of mattress, sheets and blankets, now- 
adays. 

There was the regular Monday wash-day. with 
ironing on Tuesday, and neither wringer nor 
stationary washtubs to lighten labor and lifting. 
In the country there were still fewer conveni- 
ences. Water for all purposes was often carried 
in a bucket from the foot of the hill. It was a 
great advance when wells and cisterns were dug. 
There was a great deal of company — in the 
West, at least — for this reminiscence does not 
deal with Southern homes and slave labor — and 
few meals were served at which neighbors, rela- 
tives or passing strangers were not present. In 
the homely phraseology of the pioneer fathers 
and mothers, "the latch-string was always out." 
There was the midsummer cooking for an army 
of harvest hands and threshers, with the spin- 
ning and weaving, the "slaughtering" in the 
early winter, with its curing of hams and "head- 
cheese" and sausage-making. But it was all 
by way of wholesome, if strenuous, exercise, and 
it made the good, old-fashioned servant what she 

194 



EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 

was — faithful and self-respecting — a woman 
who expected to live in one place until she mar- 
ried or died, in the latter event to be buried in 
the family lot. She was in a very intimate sense 
one of the family. The children were also, to a 
certain extent, her charge. Not even the mother 
was more deeply concerned in their welfare, their 
training and education, and their success after 
they left the home, and she, too, welcomed them 
back with open arms — them and their children 
— on their visits to the old home. 

Today Euphemia finds herself in a modern 
house abounding in every manner of modern 
convenience. There are no carpets to be swept, 
taken up and put down again; there is a gas 
range in the kitchen; the whole house is heated 
by steam and lighted by electricity, and there is 
a man to do the heavy labor, and no laundry 
work is done at home. She has, very often, a 
pleasant room which is warm in winter and cool 
in summer ; there is a bath, hot and cold water on 
every floor. Screens keep out the flies; she has 
linoleum on the kitchen floor which does away 

195 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

with too much "wiping up." There is a butler's 
pantry to which the dishes may be removed from 
the dining-room just beyond; where glass, silver 
and china may be washed and placed on dresser 
shelves along the wall, within reach. She has 
a bureau of her own, a closet with hooks and 
drawers; she can buy all manner of things on 
the instalment plan, from enlarged photographs 
to a couch covered with Brussels carpet. She 
reads the newspaper regularly in the morning, 
if she, herself, is an early riser, before any of 
the family have seen it, and she has unrestricted 
use of the ten-cent magazines — which is all the 
current literature she cares for. She also has in- 
struction at the cooking school and the advan- 
tages of night classes in shirt-waist making and 
millinery at the Y. W. C. A., for which her mis- 
tress very often pays. But all this does not de- 
velop either a contented or a willing spirit. 

As human beings are constituted, this is noth- 
ing remarkable. Instead of regarding Euphemia 
as a strange and unpleasant differentiation of 
her sex and species, why not accept her, with 

196 



EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 

all her imperfections on her head as, willingly or 
unwillingly, we must? 

Are not we, of a supposedly higher class, — 
better educated, trained and cultured — fast 
becoming a race of nomads? It is now a fixed 
belief amongst hundreds of sober-minded people 
that it is far better "not to own a home." The 
payment of a growing variety of taxes and the 
ruinous expense of repairs are thereby avoided. 
If a home is unfortunately acquired it must not 
be so good that it cannot be closed at a moment's 
notice while the family flit to Florida, California 
or Europe, or start on a year's tour around the 
world. It must have no inherited or accumulated 
treasures of books, pictures or bric-a-brac which 
the enterprising burglar might load into a wagon 
waiting in the alley at the back gate, in broad 
daylight, and carry away. . 

And is there not, in towns and cities every- 
where, a ceaseless migration from flat to board- 
ing-house, from boarding-house to hotel and back 
to flat again? The lady who moved seventeen 
times in one month is no figment of a satirist's 

197 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

disordered fancy; she still lives, though it may 
pass belief. 

With the instability of our habitations has 
come an extravagance in eating, drinking, dress- 
ing and entertaining, that has infected every class 
of society. 

Our older relatives remember perfectly a 
halcyon time when one's best bonnet was ex- 
pected to last more than one season. Now, there 
must be a new one with the return of spring, 
summer, autumn and winter, and for that recent 
invention the "half season," in between. 

In the days when we wore plain hats or bon- 
nets, as we were young or old, we ate good plain 
food; plain pound cake, little scalloped cookies, 
small, crisp, brown doughnuts sprinkled with 
powdered sugar, and "floating island" for des- 
sert. 

Now, the bill of fare is one long array of ris- 
soles, croquettes and pates, of intricate salads 
enriched with nuts and fruits, cakes compounded 
of creams, icings, fruits and "filling," and con- 
fectionery, into the composition of which have 

198 



EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 

gone countless ingredients and flavors. Yet we 
point to the disappearance of pie from the Amer- 
ican table as evidence of a more wholesome taste. 
The allurements that take men and women 
from home have also multiplied beyond all com- 
puting. For the husband and father there are 
the club, politics, the lodge, and the lobby of 
the hotel; for the wife and daughters, the club, 
all the ramifications of charities that the church 
has devised, morning lectures on domestic science 
and on household economics, the civic federation, 
and the societies auxiliary to men's secret organ- 
izations whose humble part it is to enjoy the 
patronage of the real orders and give fairs and 
socials for raising funds. In addition to these 
there are readings innumerable on art and liter- 
ature, travel classes, concerts and matinees. 
Where is the woman who professes "to be any- 
body at all," who is not forced to keep an en- 
gagement book ; to consult it every day and send 
out acceptances or regrets — few, indeed, of the 
latter — as promptly and methodically as the 
lighting and fuel companies present their bills? 



199 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

Not only are the elders provided lavishly with 
substitutes for homes, but it has now been neces- 
sary for school boards to build and furnish social 
centres for the boys and girls of high schools 
where they may meet for the amusement and 
recreation no longer obtainable under their par- 
ents' roofs. In college, the upkeep of fraternity 
houses has also become an important item in the 
cost of a modern education. With their evenings 
for dancing, and "smokers," these houses have 
superseded the rooms in halls, or in still more 
hum-drum private families. 

Why, therefore, shall Euphemia be blamed if, 
in her blind and imperfect way, and in shoes 
several sizes too small and a belt that fearfully 
compresses her thick waist, she, too, is trying to 
"keep up with the procession" — to quote the 
graphic language of the paragrapher? Her rest- 
less haunting of the main thoroughfares every 
afternoon instead of once a week, as was former- 
ly the rule ; her frantic conflicts at bargain coun- 
ters; her interpretations of extreme fashions in 
cheap materials, are the natural results of ex- 

200 



EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 

amples constantly before her, furnished by those 
whom she admires and envies and whose equal 
she feels herself to be. 

Then, if she has availed herself of the public 
schools, she has learned to read in romances 
where other maids, in positions similar to her own, 
have been wooed and won by capitalists and 
promoters, and have risen to the dignity of keep- 
ing a carriage and a scrupulously revised visit- 
ing-list. She is not the only example of aspiring 
mediocrity. Mediocrity everywhere aspires and 
climbs, not for any spiritual or intellectual bet- 
terment, but for the accomplishment of purely 
sordid ends. 

There is no sincere desire for the simple life. 
If there were, we should have it. 



201 




XXII 



Conclusion 




T is the changeless law of human 
development that mankind shall 
strive ceaselessly toward some ideal 
of perfection. Thus it gains much 
which, if not precisely what was 
sought, is still of lasting value. 
The ambition to better one's temporal condi- 
tion is general, though it admits of countless in- 
terpretations. There are always men and women 
of unquenchable hope and of boundless energy, 
fii'm in the conviction that they will succeed 
where thousands have failed. It is well for us 



20-2 



CONCLUSION 

that this is true ; if it were not we should still be 
dwelling in caves, clad in skins. 

Among these sanguine souls are the undis- 
couraged young people who have decided to share 
each other's fortunes, and who have no aspiration 
towards hotels or boarding-houses, but who look 
forward "to settling in a home of their own." 

It is a beautiful aspiration, natural as the in- 
stinct of nesting birds. They plan the appoint- 
ments of their snuggery to the last spoon, and 
see throughout a long, tranquil future only 
sweetness and light ; order, peace, exquisite meals 
for two, perfect little dinners for their friends, 
a drawing-room wherein no dust will ever gather 
and where the flowers will be always fresh. They 
see in their innocent dreams a rosy-cheeked 
housemaid in the prettiest of aprons, who does 
not regard her very becoming cap as a degrading 
badge of servitude. 

No account is taken by the innocent dreamers 
of the unexpected which always happens and of 
the expected which seldom does. They cannot 
foresee the toil and weariness, the disappoint- 

203 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ment, that lie in wait, that will not diminish un- 
til the last task drops from the stiffening Angers 
of old age when death has touched them. In 
the glamour of their youth, of their unclouded 
faith, there is no thought of the tribulations that 
will vex them, and can be escaped by no known 
powers of strategy or evasion. 

Charles is all devotion; he has spoken, thus 
far, only in dulcet tones. His wish to please has 
prompted him to appear only in his best and at 
his best. How can Edith even faintly imagine 
him comfortably slouching about the house in 
loose, shapeless slippers, in shabby smoking 
jacket, indifferent to appearances? 

And Charles, in his sentimental musings, has 
no conception of the lovely Edith in a dress- 
ing sack and curl-papers, perhaps a little irri- 
table and unable to appreciate his humor. Yet it 
probably will come to this, unless they are very 
exceptional young people indeed. Where Charles 
now hangs upon Edith's slightest word, he will 
answer absent-mindedly from behind his news- 
paper; or, being absorbed in the market reports 



204 



CONCLUSION 



or the account of the football match, he will not 
hear and will not answer at all. 

And what passes belief, if they are really sen- 
sible young people, having taken each other for 
worse, as well as for better, when this prosaic 
stage is reached they will not lapse into selfish 
indifference and decide that their whole romance 
has been a mistake and that marriage is a failure. 
They w^ll realize that they have simply grown 
used to each other; that if they can appear in 
every-day attire, talk or keep silent, it is be- 
cause they have settled down into a rational, un- 
sentimental comradeship, which is the comfort- 
ing and comfortable end of nearly every ro- 
mance; the inevitable consequence of daily and 
famijiar association. 

As Edith looks fondly over her beautiful wed- 
ding presents, it is a wise dispensation of Provi- 
dence that she should be unable to foresee that, 
without ceaseless vigilance on her part, the silver 
forks will be used surreptitiously by Euphemia 
to clear the ashes from the grate of the kitchen 
range; that the drawn-work doylies will disap- 



205 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

pear one by one ; that the silk cushions will grow 
dingy from rough handling; that the cut glass 
bowl will be cracked by hot water ; that the Vene- 
tian glass vase, iridescent as an opal and light 
as a bubble, will be swept from the mantel by a 
savage swish of the forbidden feather-duster. 
Yes; it is a wise arrangement that she cannot 
read the future. 

For her best and most merciful discipline and 
education these disasters will come one — or, per- 
haps, two — at a time. But they will surely 
come, and she need not think she can escape the 
troubles that have assailed her ancestral grand- 
mothers back to the days of light housekeeping 
in Eden. 

Much more forbearance, wisdom and patience 
have been brought to bear upon the domestic 
problem in the past than she will ever be able to 
acquire by mere observation and theorizing; ac- 
cidents, misfortunes and imperfection are still 
rife. Nor is there hope for immediate relief from 
cooking schools and classes in household econo- 
mics. The teachers in these practical sciences, 
themselves, deal largely in theories; their pupils 

206 



CONCLUSION 

are girls of intelligence, who are anxious to learn ; 
and they work in class-rooms, not in real kitch- 
ens, where even such as they must meet the com- 
mon enemy and very often be defeated. 

Three virtues may be cultivated, however, 
which will be an ever present help in time of 
trouble — patience, courage and unyielding per- 
severance. 

All these presuppose health, strength and 
somid nerves, which it is to be hoped that Edith 
possesses. Charles, on his part, may not realize 
that all domestic knowledge is not acquired in a 
day, especially where the mother has failed to 
train up her daughter in the way she should go. 
He is destined in the painful probationary stages 
of married life to eat many a burnt steak, 
scorched potato and leaden roll before the fair 
hand of his Edith has acquired something ap- 
proaching the skill of his mother. Her appren- 
ticeship will be for him, too, a season of physical 
and spiritual discipline, and, possibly, differences 
may arise not easily adjusted. 

That was a fine old fable — "The Discon- 
tented Pendulum." How hopeless seemed the 

90T 



PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 

ceaseless business required of the poor pendulum 
— counting, forever, the seconds, through days, 
nights, weeks, months and years. But what a 
difference it made when he came to realize that 
each second was an allotted portion of time, and 
only one day's work was appointed to the twenty- 
four hours. 

In spite of everything, making and maintain- 
ing a good home is of all undertakings the best 
worth doing. Kate Field once said: 

*'The world would go on just the same if there 
were not a woman in the professions. It would 
come to speedy ruin if there were no women in 
the home." 

All that our highest development has brought 
to pass has had its origin there, except in very 
rare instances, for untaught waifs who have be- 
come great men and women have been few in- 
deed. It is there that habits of accuracy and 
obedience must be inculcated, the two qualities 
above all others upon which success depends, 
since accuracy is only another name for honesty, 
and obedience for fidelity. 

The woman who looks well to the ways of 

208 



CONCLUSION 

her household is a conservator of the greatest 
forces that shape the destinies of the race, and in 
what is required of her there is nothing incon- 
sequential or of little account. She influences 
and nurtures in their incipiency the economic 
measures that better the nations and which make 
all wholesome life possible. A home under fine 
supervision is like a fertile land through which 
flow a myriad crystal streams; over which are 
spread rich fields of ripening grain ; in which are 
rooted the fruitful trees of the orchard , the giants 
of the forest that lend their strength to civiliza- 
tion, to the building of bridges along the thor- 
oughfares of the world, of ships that carry the 
traffic of the high seas, of roofs that shelter the 
life of the race. 

It behooves the home-maker, then, to honor her 
place with efficiency, and to meet its demands 
with willingness and fortitude in which there 
shall be neither regret nor repining, for that 
which is mistakenly called a wider sphere. There 
is, in all the varied affairs of this world, none 
wider and none so sacred. 



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